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GOLDEN  LADS 


Plwto.  EzeeMor. 


THE  PLAYBOYS  OF  THE  WESTERN  FRONT. 

The  famous  French  Fusiliers  Marins.  These  sailors  from  Brit- 
tany are  called  "Les  demoiselles  au  pompon  rouge,"  because  of 
their  youth  and  the  gay  red  tassel  on  their  cap. 


GOLDEN  LADS 


A  Thrilling  Account  of  how  the  invading 
War  Machine  crushed  Belgium 

By  Arthur  H.  Gleason  and  Helen  Hayes  Gleason 
With  an  Introduction  by  Theodore  Roosevelt 


With  Illustrations  from  Photographs 


A.  L.  BURT  COMPANY 

Publishers  New  York 

Published  by  Arrangements  with  THE  CENTURY  COMPANY 


Copyright,  1916,  by 
THE  CENTURY  Co. 

Copyright,    1915,   by    the 
CURTIS  PUBLISHING  COMPANY. 

Copyright,  1916,  by  the 
BUTTERICK  PUBLISHING  COMPANY. 
Copyright,   1915  and   1916,  by  the 
TRIBUNE  ASSOCIATION. 

Published,  April,  1916 


Stack 

f.nnex 

0 

SHI 


TO  THE 

SAILORS  OF  BRITTANY 

THE  BOY  SOLDIERS  OF  THE  FRENCH  FUSILIERS  MARINS 

WHOSE  WOUNDED  IT  WAS  OUR  PRIVILEGE  TO  CARRY  IN  FROM  THE 

FIELD  OF  HONOR  AT  MELLE,  DIXMUDE, 

AND  NIEUPORT 


Profits  from  the  sale  of  this  book  will  go  to  "The 
American  Committee  for  Training  in  Suitable  Trades 
the  Maimed  Soldiers  of  France." 


CONCERNING  THIS  BOOK 

It  would  be  futile  to  publish  one  more  war- 
book,  unless  the  writer  had  been  an  eye-witness 
of  unusual  things.  I  am  an  American  who  saw 
atrocities  which  are  recorded  in  the  Bryce  Report. 
This  book  grows  out  of  months  of  day-by-day 
living  in  the  war  zone.  I  have  been  a  member 
of  the  Hector  Munro  Ambulance  Corps,  which 
was  permitted  to  work  at  the  front  because  the 
Prime  Minister  of  Belgium  placed  his  son  in  mili- 
tary command  of  us.  That  young  man,  being 
brave  and  adventurous,  led  us  along  the  first  line 
of  trenches,  and  into  villages  under  shell  fire,  so 
that  we  saw  the  armies  in  action. 

We  started  at  Ghent  in  September,  1914,  came 
to  Fumes,  worked  in  Dixmude,  Pervyse,  Nieu- 
port  and  Ypres,  during  moments  of  pressure  on 
those  strategic  points.  In  the  summer  of  1915, 
we  were  attached  to  the  French  Fusiliers  Marins. 
My  wife's  experience  covers  a  period  of  twelve 

vii 


CONCERNING  THIS  BOOK 

months  in  Belgium.  My  own  time  at  the  front 
was  five  months. 

Observers  at  long-distance  that  are  neutral 
sometimes  fail  to  see  fundamentals  in  the  present 
conflict,  and  talk  of  "negotiations"  between 
right  and  wrong.  It  is  easy  for  people  who 
have  not  suffered  to  be  tolerant  toward  wrong- 
doing. This  war  is  a  long  war  because  of  Ger- 
man methods  of  frightfulness.  These  practices 
have  bred  an  enduring  will  to  conquer  in  French- 
man and  Briton  and  Belgian  which  will  not  pause 
till  victory  is  thorough.  Because  the  German 
military  power  has  sinned  against  women  and 
children,  it  will  be  fought  with  till  it  is  over- 
thrown. I  wish  to  make  clear  this  determination 
of  the  Allies.  They  hate  the  army  of  Aerschot 
and  Lorraine  as  a  mother  hates  the  defiler  of  her 
child. 

There  are  two  wars  on  the  Western  Front. 
One  is  the  war  of  aggression.  It  was  led  up  to 
by  years  of  treachery.  It  was  consummated  in 
frightfulness.  It  is  warfare  by  machine.  Of 
that  war,  as  carried  on  by  the  "Conquerors,"  the 
first  half  of  this  book  tells.  On  points  that  have 

viii 


CONCERNING  THIS  BOOK 

been  in  dispute  since  the  outbreak,  I  am  able  to 
say  "I  saw.'*  When  the  Army  of  Invasion  fell 
on  the  little  people,  I  witnessed  the  signs  of  its 
passage  as  it  wrote  them  by  flame  and  bayonet  on 
peasant  homes  and  peasant  bodies. 

In  the  second  half  of  the  book,  I  have  tried  to 
tell  of  a  people's  uprising — the  fight  of  the  living 
spirit  against  the  war-machine.  A  righteous  de- 
fensive war,  such  as  Belgium  and  France  are  wag- 
ing, does  not  brutalize  the  nation.  It  reveals  a 
beauty  of  sacrifice  which  makes  common  men  into 
"golden  lads." 

Was  this  struggle  forced  on  an  unwilling  Ger- 
many, or  was  she  the  aggressor*? 

I  believe  we  have  the  answer  of  history  in  such 
evidences  as  I  have  seen  of  her  patient  ancient  spy 
system  that  honeycombed  Belgium. 

Is  she  waging  a  "holy  war,"  ringed  around  by 
jealous  foes'? 

I  believe  we  have  the  final  answer  in  such 
atrocities  as  I  witnessed.  A  hideous  officially  or- 
dered method  is  proof  of  unrighteousness  in  the 
cause  itself. 

Are  you  indicting  a  nation*? 
ix 


CONCERNING  THIS  BOOK 

No,  only  a  military  system  that  ordered  the 
slow  sapping  of  friendly  neighboring  powers. 

Only  the  host  of  "tourists,"  clerks,  waiters,  gen- 
tlemanly officers,  that  betrayed  the  hospitality  of 
people  of  good  will. 

Only  an  army  that  practised  mutilation  and 
murder  on  children,  and  mothers,  and  old  people, 
— and  that  carried  it  through  coldly,  systemati- 
cally, with  admirable  discipline. 

I  believe  there  are  multitudes  of  common  sol- 
diers who  are  sorry  that  they  have  outraged  the 
helpless. 

An  army  of  half  a  million  men  will  return  to 
the  home-land  with  very  bitter  memories.  Many 
a  simple  German  of  this  generation  will  be  unable 
to  look  into  the  face  of  his  own  child  without  re- 
membering some  tiny  peasant  face  of  pain — the 
child  whom  he  bayoneted,  or  whom  he  saw  his 
comrade  bayonet,  having  failed  to  put  his  body 
between  the  little  one  and  death. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

THE  CONQUERORS 

FACE 

THE  SPY 3 

THE   ATROCITY 26 

BALLAD  OF  THE  GERMANS 45 

THE    STEAM    ROLLER 48 

MY  EXPERIENCE  WITH  BAEDEKER 66 

GOLDEN  LADS 

THE    PLAY-BOYS    OF   BRITTANY 79 

"ENCHANTED    CIGARETTES" 95 

WAS  IT  REAL? jI3 

"CHANTONS,    BELGES!     CHANTONS!" 127 

FLIES:     A    FANTASY I52 

WOMEN  UNDER  FIRE T68 

HOW  WAR  SEEMS  TO  A  WOMAN !92 

LES  TRAVAILLEURS  DE  LA  GUERRE 234 

REMAKING  FRANCE 253 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

The  Play-boys  of  the  Western  Front   .     .     .    Frontispiece 

Peasants'  cottages  burned  by  Germans 8 

The  home  of  a  German  spy  near  Coxyde  Bains,  Belgium  .     13 

Church  in  Termonde  which  the  writer  saw 42 

One   of  the   dangerous   Belgian   franc-tireurs    ....     51 
Fifteenth  century  Gothic  church  in  Nieuport   ....     69 
Sailors  lifting  a  wounded  comrade  into  the  motor-ambu- 
lance   87 

Door  chalked  by  the  Germans 105 

Street  fighting  in  Alost 123 

Belgian  officer  on  the  last  strip  of  his  country  ....   134 
A  Belgian  boy  soldier  in  the  uniform  of  the  first  army 

which  served  at  Liege  and  Namur 139 

Belgians  in  their  new  Khaki  uniform,  in  praise  of  which 

they   wrote   a   song 145 

Breton  sailors  ready  for  their  noon  meal  in  a  village  under 

daily  shell  fire 187 

Sleeping  quarters  for  Belgian  soldiers 206 

Belgian  soldiers  telephoning  to  an  anti-aircraft  gun  the 

approach  of  a  German  taube 215 

Postcards  sketched  and  blocked  by  a  Belgian  workman, 
A.  Van   Doorne    .............  229 


INTRODUCTION 

BY  THEODORE  ROOSEVELT 

On  August  4,  1914,  the  issue  of  this  war  for 
the  conscience  of  the  world  was  Belgium.  Now, 
in  the  spring  of  1916,  the  issue  remains  Belgium. 
For  eighteen  months,  our  people  were  bidden  by 
their  representative  at  Washington  to  feel  no 
resentment  against  a  hideous  wrong.  They  were 
taught  to  tame  their  human  feelings  by  polished 
phrases  of  neutrality.  Because  they  lacked  the 
proper  outlet  of  expression,  they  grew  indifferent 
to  a  supreme  injustice.  They  temporarily  lost  the 
capacity  to  react  powerfully  against  wrongdoing. 

But  today  they  are  at  last  becoming  alive  to 
the  iniquity  of  the  crushing  of  Belgium.  Belgium 
is  the  battleground  of  the  war  on  the  western 
front.  But  Belgium  is  also  the  battleground  of 
the  struggle  in  our  country  between  the  forces  of 
good  and  of  evil.  In  the  ranks  of  evil  are  ranged 
all  the  pacifist  sentimentalists,  the  cowards  who 
possess  the  gift  of  clothing  their  cowardice  in 
soothing  and  attractive  words,  the  materialists 
whose  souls  have  been  rotted  by  exclusive  devo- 
tion to  the  things  of  the  body,  the  sincere  persons 

xv 


xvi  INTRODUCTION 

who  are  cursed  with  a  deficient  sense  of  reality, 
and  all  who  lack  foresight  or  who  are  uninformed. 
Against  them  stand  the  great  mass  of  loyal  Ameri- 
cans, who,  when  they  see  the  right,  and  receive 
moral  leadership,  show  that  they  have  in  their 
souls  as  much  of  the  valor  of  righteousness  as  the 
men  of  1860  and  of  1776.  The  literary  bureau 
at  Washington  has  acted  as  a  soporific  on  the  mind 
and  conscience  of  the  American  people.  Fine 
words,  designed  to  work  confusion  between  right 
and  wrong,  have  put  them  to  sleep.  But  they 
now  stir  in  their  sleep. 

The  proceeds  from  the  sale  of  this  book  are  to 
be  used  for  a  charity  in  which  every  intelligent 
American  feels  a  personal  interest.  The  training 
of  maimed  soldiers  in  suitable  trades  is  making 
possible  the  reconstruction  of  an  entire  nation. 
It  is  work  carried  on  by  citizens  of  the  neutral 
nations.  The  cause  itself  is  so  admirable  that  it 
deserves  wide  support.  It  gives  an  outlet  for  the 
ethical  feelings  of  our  people,  feelings  that  have 
been  unnaturally  dammed  for  nearly  two  years 
by  the  cold  and  timid  policy  of  our  Government. 

The  testimony  of  the  book  is  the  first-hand 
witness  of  an  American  citizen  who  was  present 
when  the  Army  of  Invasion  blotted  out  a  little 


INTRODUCTION  xvii 

nation.  This  is  an  eye-witness  report  on  the  dis- 
puted points  of  this  war.  The  author  saw  the 
wrongs  perpetrated  on  helpless  non-combatants  by 
direct  military  orders.  He  shows  that  the  fright- 
fulness  practiced  on  peasant  women  and  children 
was  the  carrying  out  of  a  Government  policy, 
planned  in  advance,  ordered  from  above.  It  was 
not  the  product  of  irresponsible  individual  drunken 
soldiers.  His  testimony  is  clear  on  this  point.  He 
goes  still  further,  and  shows  that  individual  sol- 
diers resented  their  orders,  and  most  unwillingly 
carried  through  the  cruelty  that  was  forced  on 
them  from  Berlin.  In  his  testimony  he  is  kindlier 
to  the  German  race,  to  the  hosts  of  peasants,  clerks 
and  simple  soldiers,  than  the  defenders  of  Bel- 
gium's obliteration  have  been.  They  seek  to  ex- 
cuse acts  of  infamy.  But  the  author  shows  that 
the  average  German  is  sorry  for  those  acts. 

It  is  fair  to  remember  in  reading  Mr.  Gleason's 
testimony  concerning  these  deeds  of  the  German 
Army  that  he  has  never  received  a  dollar  of  money 
for  anything  he  has  spoken  or  written  on  the  sub- 
ject. He  gave  without  payment  the  articles  on 
the  Spy,  the  Atrocity,  and  the  Steam  Roller  to 
the  New  York  Tribune.  The  profits  from  the 
lectures  he  has  delivered  on  the  same  subject  have 


xviii  INTRODUCTION 

been  used  for  well-known  public  charities.     The 
book  itself  is  a  gift  to  a  war  fund. 

Of  Mr.  Gleason's  testimony  on  atrocities  I  have 
already  written  (see  page  38). 

What  he  saw  was  reported  to  the  Bryce  Com- 
mittee by  the  young  British  subject  who  accom- 
panied him,  and  these  atrocities,  which  Mr. 
Gleason  witnessed,  appear  in  the  Bryce  Report 
under  the  heading  of  Alost.  It  is  of  value  to  know 
that  an  American  witnessed  atrocities  recorded  in 
the  Bryce  Report,  as  it  disposes  of  the  German 
rejoinders  that  the  Report  is  ex-parte  and  of 
second-hand  rumor. 

His  chapter  on  the  Spy  System  answers  the 
charge  that  it  was  Belgium  who  violated  her  own 
neutrality,  and  forced  an  unwilling  Germany, 
threatened  by  a  ring  of  foes,  to  defend  herself. 

The  chapter  on  the  Steam  Roller  shows  that  the 
same  policy  of  injustice  that  was  responsible  for 
the  original  atrocities  is  today  operating  to  flatten, 
out  what  is  left  of  a  free  nation. 

The  entire  book  is  a  protest  against  the  craven 
attitude  of  our  Government. 

THEODORE  ROOSEVELT. 

March  28,    1916. 


THE  CONQUERORS 


GOLDEN  LADS 

THE  SPY 

GERMANY  uses  three  methods  in  turning  a 
free  nation  into  a  vassal  state.  By  a  spy 
system,  operated  through  years,  she  saps  the  na- 
tional strength.  By  sudden  invasion,  accom- 
panied by  atrocity,  she  conquers  the  territory,  al- 
ready prepared.  By  continuing  occupation,  she 
flattens  out  what  is  left  of  a  once  independent 
people.  In  England  and  North  America,  she  has 
used  her  first  method.  France  has  experienced 
both  the  spy  and  the  atrocity.  It  has  been  re- 
served for  Belgium  to  be  submitted  to  the  three- 
fold process.  I  shall  tell  what  I  have  seen  of  the 
spy  system,  the  use  of  frightfulness,  and  the  en- 
forced occupation. 

It  is  a  mistake  for  us  to  think  that  the  worst 
thing  Germany  has  done  is  to  torture  and  kill 
many  thousands  of  women  and  children.  She 

3 


GOLDEN  LADS 

undermines  a  country  with  her  secret  agents  be- 
fore she  lays  it  waste.  In  time  of  peace,  with 
her  spy  system,  she  works  like  a  mole  through  a 
wide  area  till  the  ground  is  ready  to  cave  in.  She 
plays  on  the  good  will  and  trustfulness  of  other 
peoples  till  she  has  tapped  the  available  informa- 
tion. That  betrayal  of  hospitality,  that  taking 
advantage  of  human  feeling,  is  a  baser  thing  than 
her  unique  savagery  in  war  time. 

During  my  months  in  Belgium  I  have  been  sur- 
rounded by  evidences  of  this  spy  system,  the  long, 
slow  preparedness  which  Germany  makes  in  an- 
other country  ahead  of  her  deadly  pounce.  It  is 
a  silent,  peaceful  invasion,  as  destructive  as  the 
house-to-house  burning  and  the  killing  of  babies 
and  mothers  to  which  it  later  leads. 

The  German  military  power,  which  is  the  mod- 
ern Germany,  is  able  to  obtain  agents  to  carry  out 
this  policy,  and  make  its  will  prevail,  by  dissemi- 
nating a  new  ethic,  a  philosophy  of  life,  which 
came  to  expression  with  Bismarck  and  has  gone 
on  extending  its  influence  since  the  victories  of 
1 870— '7 1 .  The  German  people  believe  they  serve 
a  higher  God  than  the  rest  of  us.  We  serve  (very 

4 


THE  SPY 

imperfectly  and  only  part  of  the  time)  such  ideals 
as  mercy,  pity,  and  loyalty  to  the  giver  of  the 
bread  we  eat.  The  Germans  serve  (efficiently  and 
all  the  time)  the  State,  a  supreme  deity,  who  sends 
them  to  spy  out  a  land  in  peace  time,  to  build  gun 
foundations  in  innocent-looking  houses,  buy  up 
poverty-stricken  peasants,  measure  distances,  win 
friendship,  and  worm  out  secrets.  With  that  in- 
formation digested  and  those  preparations  com- 
pleted, the  State  (an  entity  beyond  good  and  evil) 
calls  on  its  citizens  to  make  war,  and,  in  making 
it,  to  practise  frightfulness.  It  orders  its  serv- 
ants to  lay  aside  pity  and  burn  peasants  in  their 
homes,  to  bayonet  women  and  children,  to  shoot 
old  men.  Of  course,  there  are  exceptions  to  this. 
There  are  Germans  of  the  vintage  of  '48,  and 
later,  many  of  them  honest  and  peaceable  dwell- 
ers in  the  country  which  shelters  them.  But  the 
imperial  system  has  little  use  for  them.  They  do 
not  serve  its  purpose. 

The  issue  of  the  war,  as  Belgium  and  France  see 
it,  is  this:  Are  they  to  live  or  die?  Are  they  to 
be  charted  out  once  again  through  years  till  their 
hidden  weakness  is  accurately  located,  and  then  is 

5 


GOLDEN  LADS 

an  army  to  be  let  loose  on  them  that  will  visit  a 
universal  outrage  on  their  children  and  wives? 
Peace  will  be  intolerable  till  this  menace  is  re- 
moved. The  restoration  of  territory  in  Belgium 
and  Northern  France  and  the  return  to  the  status 
quo  before  the  war,  are  not  sufficient  guarantees 
for  the  future.  The  status  quo  before  the  war 
means  another  insidious  invasion,  carried  on  unre- 
mittingly month  by  month  by  business  agents, 
commercial  travelers,  genial  tourists,  and  studious 
gentlemen  in  villas.  A  crippled,  broken  Teu- 
tonic military  power  is  the  only  guarantee  that  a 
new  army  of  spies  will  not  take  the  road  to  Brus- 
sels and  Paris  on  the  day  that  peace  is  signed. 
No  simple  solution  like,  "Call  it  all  off,  we  '11 
start  in  fresh;  bygones  are  bygones,"  meets  the 
real  situation.  The  Allied  nations  have  been  in- 
fested with  a  cloud  of  witnesses  for  many  years. 
Are  they  to  submit  once  again  to  that  secret  proc- 
ess of  the  Germans? 

The  French,  for  instance,  want  to  clear  their 
country  of  a  cloud  which  has  been  thick  and  black 
for  forty- three  years.  They  always  said  the  Ger- 
mans would  come  again  with  the  looting  and  the 

6 


PEASANTS'    COTTAGES    BURNED    BY   GERMANS. 

The  separate  flame  in  each  cottage  is  clearly  visible,  proving  that  each 
house  was  separately  set  on  fire.  RadclyfTe  Dugmore  took  this  photograph 
at  Melle,  where  he  and  the  writer  were  made  prisoners. 


THE  SPY 

torture  and  the  foulness.  This  time  they  will 
their  fight  to  a  finish.  They  are  sick  of  hate,  so 
they  are  fighting  to  end  war.  But  it  is  not  an 
empty  peace  that  they  want — peace,  with  a  new 
drive  when  the  Krupp  howitzers  are  big  enough, 
and  the  spies  in  Paris  thick  enough,  to  make  the 
death  of  France  a  six  weeks'  picnic.  They  want  a 
lasting  peace,  that  will  take  fear  from  the  wife's 
heart,  and  make  it  a  happiness  to  have  a  child,  not 
a  horror.  They  want  to  blow  the  ashes  off  of  Lor- 
raine. Peace,  as  preached  by  our  Woman's  Peace 
Party  and  by  our  pacifist  clergy  and  by  the  sign- 
ers of  the  plea  for  an  embargo  on  the  ammuni- 
tions that  are  freeing  France  from  her  invaders, 
is  a  German  peace.  If  successfully  consummated, 
it  will  grant  Germany  just  time  enough  to  rest 
and  breed  and  lay  the  traps,  and  then  release 
another  universal  massacre.  How  can  the  Al- 
lies state  their  terms  of  peace  in  other  than  a 
militant  way*?  There  is  nothing  here  to  be  ar- 
bitrated. Pleasant  sentiments  of  brotherhood 
evade  the  point  at  issue.  The  way  of  just  peace 
is  by  "converting"  Germany.  There  is  only  one 
cure  for  long-continued  treachery,  and  that  is 

9 


GOLDEN  LADS 

to  demonstrate  its  failure.  To  pause  short  of  a 
thorough  victory  over  the  deep,  inset  habits  and 
methods  of  Germany  is  to  destroy  the  spirit  of 
France.  It  will  not  be  well  for  a  premier  race 
of  the  world  to  go  down  in  defeat.  We  need  her 
thrifty  Lorraine  peasants  and  Brittany  sailors,  her 
unfailing  gift  to  the  light  of  the  world,  more  than 
we  need  a  thorough  German  spy  system  and  a  sol- 
diery obedient  to  commands  of  vileness. 

Very  much  more  slowly  England,  too,  is  learn- 
ing what  the  fight  is  about. 

It  is  German  violation  of  the  fundamental  de- 
cencies that  makes  it  difficult  to  find  common 
ground  to  build  on  for  the  future.  It  is  at  this 
point  that  the  spy  system  of  slow-seeping  treach- 
ery and  the  atrocity  program  of  dramatic  fright- 
fulness  overlap.  It  is  in  part  out  of  the  habit  of 
betraying  hospitality  that  the  atrocities  have 
emerged.  It  is  n't  as  if  they  were  extemporized 
— a  sudden  flare,  with  no  background.  They  are 
the  logical  result  of  doing  secretly  for  years  that 
which  humanity  has  agreed  not  to  do. 

Some  of  the  members  of  our  Red  Cross  unit — 
the  Hector  Munro  Ambulance  Corps — worked  for 

10 


THE  SPY 

a  full  year  with  the  French  Fusiliers  Marins,  per- 
haps the  most  famous  6000  righting  men  in  the 
western  line.  They  were  sailor  boys.  They  cov- 
ered the  retreat  of  the  Belgian  army.  They  con- 
solidated the  Yser  position  by  holding  Dixmude 
for  three  weeks  against  a  German  force  that  out- 
numbered them.  Then  for  a  year,  up  to  a  few 
months  ago,  they  helped  to  hold  the  Nieuport  sec- 
tion, the  last  northern  point  of  the  Allied  line. 
When  they  entered  the  fight  at  Melle  in  October, 
1914,  our  corps  worked  with  one  of  their  doctors, 
and  came  to  know  him.  Later  he  took  charge  of 
a  dressing  station  near  St.  George.  Here  one  day 
the  Germans  made  a  sudden  sortie,  drove  back  the 
Fusiliers  for  a  few  minutes,  and  killed  the  Red 
Cross  roomful,  bayoneting  the  wounded  men. 
The  Fusiliers  shortly  won  back  their  position, 
found  their  favorite  doctor  dead,  and  in  a  fury 
wiped  out  the  Germans  who  had  murdered  him 
and  his  patients,  saving  one  man  alive.  They 
sent  him  back  to  the  enemy's  lines  to  say : 

"Tell  your  men  how  we  fight  when  you  bayonet 
our  wounded." 

That  sudden  act  of  German  falseness  was  the 
11 


GOLDEN  LADS 

product  of  slow,  careful  undermining  of  moral 
values. 

One  of  the  best  known  women  in  Belgium, 
whose  name  I  dare  not  give,  told  me  of  her  friends, 

the  G 's,  at  L (she  gave  me  name  and 

address).  When  the  first  German  rush  came 
down  on  Belgium  the  household  was  asked  to  shel- 
ter German  officers,  one  of  whom  the  lady  had 
known  socially  in  peace  days.  The  next  morn- 
ing soldiers  went  through  the  house,  destroying 
paintings  with  the  bayonet  and  wrecking  furni- 
ture. The  lady  appealed  to  the  officer. 

"I  know  you,"  she  said.  "We  have  met  as 
equals  and  friends.  How  can  you  let  this  be 
done?" 

"This  is  war,"  he  replied. 

No  call  of  chivalry,  of  the  loyalties  of  guest  and 
host,  is  to  be  listened  to.  And  for  the  perpetrat- 
ing of  this  cold  program  years  of  silent  spy  treach- 
ery were  a  perfect  preparation.  It  was  no  sudden 
unrelated  horror  to  which  Germans  had  to  force 
themselves.  It  was  an  astonishing  thing  to  sim- 
ple Belgian  gentlemen  and  gentlewomen  to  see  the 
old  friendly  German  faces  of  tourists  and  social 

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THE  SPY 

guests  show  up,  on  horseback,  riding  into  the  cities 
as  conquerors  where  they  had  so  often  been  en- 
tertained as  friends.  Let  me  give  you  the  testi- 
mony of  a  Belgian  lady  whom  we  know.  She  is 
now  inside  the  German  lines,  so  I  cannot  give  her 
name. 

"When  the  German  troops  entered  Brussels," 
she  states,  "we  suddenly  discovered  that  our  good 
friends  had  been  secret  agents  and  were  now  offi- 
cers in  charge  of  the  invasion.  As  the  army  came 
in,  with  their  trumpets  and  flags  and  goose-step- 
ping, we  picked  out  our  friends  entertained  by  us 
in  our  salons — dinner  guests  for  years.  They  had 
originally  come  with  every  recommendation  pos- 
sible— letters  from  friends,  themselves  men  of 
good  birth.  They  had  worked  their  way  into  the 
social-political  life  of  Brussels.  They  had  won 
their  place  in  our  friendly  feeling.  And  here 
they  had  returned  to  us  at  the  head  of  troops  to 
conquer  us,  after  having  served  as  secret  agents 
through  the  years  of  friendly  social  intercourse." 

After  becoming  proficient  in  that  kind  of  be- 
trayal the  officers  found  it  only  a  slight  wrench 
to  pass  on  to  the  wholesale  murder  of  the  people 

15 


GOLDEN  LADS 

whose  bread  they  had  eaten  and  whom  they  had 
tricked.  The  treachery  explains  the  atrocity.  It 
is  worth  while  to  repeat  and  emphasize  this  point. 
Many  persons  have  asked  me,  "How  do  you  ac- 
count for  these  terrible  acts  of  mutilation*?"  The 
answer  is,  what  the  Germans  did  suddenly  by 
flame  and  bayonet  is  only  a  continuation  of  what 
they  have  done  for  years  by  poison. 

Here  follows  the  testimony  of  a  man  whom  I 
know,  Doctor  George  Sarton,  of  the  University 
of  Ghent: 

"Each  year  more  Germans  came  to  Belgian  sum- 
mer resorts;  Blankenberghe,  for  instance,  was  full 
of  them.  They  were  all  very  well  received  and 
had  plenty  of  friends  in  Belgian  families,  from  the 
court  down.  When  the  war  broke  out,  it  im- 
mediately became  evident  that  many  of  these  wel- 
comed guests  had  been  spying,  measuring  dis- 
tances, preparing  foundations  for  heavy  guns  in 
their  villas  located  at  strategical  points,  and  so 
on.  It  is  noteworthy  that  this  spying  was  not 
simply  done  by  poor  devils  who  had  not  been  able 
to  make  money  in  a  cleaner  way — but  by  very 
successful  German  business  men,  sometimes  men 

16 


THE  SPY 

of  great  wealth  and  whose  wealth  had  been  almost 
entirely  built  up  in  Belgium.  These  men  were 
extremely  courteous  and  serviceable,  they  spent 
much  money  upon  social  functions  and  in  the  pro- 
motion of  charities,  German  schools,  churches  and 
the  like ;  they  had  numerous  friends,  in  some  cases 
they  had  married  Belgian  girls  and  their  boys  were 
members  of  the  special  corps  of  our  'National 
Guard.'  .  .  .  Yet  at  the  same  time,  they  were 
prying  into  everything,  spying  everywhere. 

"When  the  Germans  entered  into  Belgium,  they 
were  guided  wherever  they  went  by  some  one  of 
their « officers  or  men  who  knew  all  about  each 
place.  Directors  of  factories  were  startled  to  rec- 
ognize some  of  their  work  people  transformed  into 
Uhlans.  A  man  who  had  been  a  professor  at  the 
University  of  Brussels  had  the  impudence  to  call 
upon  his  former  'friends'  in  the  uniform  of  a 
German  officer. 

"When  the  war  is  over,  when  Belgium  is  free 
again,  it  will  not  be  many  years  before  the  Ger- 
mans come  back,  at  least  their  peaceful  and 
'friendly5  vanguard.  How  will  they  be  received 
this  time?  It  is  certain  that  it  will  be  extremely 


GOLDEN  LADS 

difficult  for  them  to  make  friends  again.  As  to 
myself,  when  I  meet  them  again  in  my  country — 
I  shall  ask  myself:  'Is  he  a  friend,  or  is  he  a 
spy1?'  And  the  business  men  will  think:  'Are 
they  coming  as  faithful  partners,  or  simply  to  steal 
and  rob?'  That  will  be  their  well  deserved  re- 
ward." 

One  mile  from  where  we  were  billeted  on  the 
Belgian  coast  stood  a  villa  owned  by  a  German. 
It  lay  between  St.  Idesbald  and  Coxyde  Bains,  on 
a  sand  dune,  commanding  the  Channel.  After 
the  war  broke  out  the  Belgians  examined  it  and 
found  it  was  a  fortification.  Its  walls  were  of 
six-foot  thickness,  of  heavy  blocks  of  stone  and 
concrete.  Its  massive  flooring  was  cleverly  dis- 
guised by  a  layer  of  fancy  tiling.  Its  interior 
was  fitted  with  little  compartments  for  hydraulic 
apparatus  for  raising  weights,  and  there  was  a 
tangle  of  wires  and  pipes.  Dynamite  cleared 
away  the  upper  stories.  Workmen  hacked  away 
the  lower  story,  piece  by  piece,  during  several 
weeks  of  our  stay.  Two  members  of  our  corps 
inspected  the  interior.  It  lay  just  off  the  excellent 
road  that  runs  from  St.  Idesbald  to  Coxyde  Bains, 

18 


THE  SPY 

up  which  ammunition  could  be  fed  to  it  for  its 
coast  defense  work.  The  Germans  expected  an 
easy  march  down  the  coast,  with  these  safety  sta- 
tions ready  for  them  at  points  of  need.1 

A  Belgian  soldier  rode  into  a  Belgian  village 
one  evening  at  twilight  during  the  early  days  of 

1  When  I  first  published  these  statements  the  following  letter 
appeared  in  the  "New  York  Tribune":  — 

GERMANY'S  SPY  SYSTEM 

To  the  Editor  of  "The  Tribune." 

Sir:  I  was  particularly  interested  in  the  article  by  Mr.  Glea- 
son  in  this  morning's  "Tribune"  because,  having  spent  several 
months  in  this  region  in  ambulance  work,  I  am  able  to  support 
several  of  his  statements  from  personal  observation. 

The  house  he  mentions  on  the  beach  near  Coxyde  Bains  was 
beyond  doubt  intended  for  the  purpose  he  describes.  I  visited 
it  several  times  before  it  was  completely  destroyed,  and  have 
now  in  my  possession  photographs  which  show  the  nature  of  the 
building,  besides  a  tile  from  the  flooring. 

Two  instances  in  which  spies  were  detected  came  to  my 
knowledge;  in  one  case  the  person  in  question  was  the  mayor  of 
the  town,  in  the  other  a  peasant  woman.  One  other  time  I 
know  of  information  was  given  undetected  which  resulted  in 
the  shelling  of  a  road  at  a  time  when  a  convoy  of  motors  was 
about  to  pass. 

The  high  esteem  in  which  the  Red  Cross  flag  is  held  by  Ger- 
man gunners  (as  a  target)  is  only  too  forcibly  impressed  upon 
one  in  that  service. 

MALCOLM  T. 


Mr.  Robertson  is  a  member  of  the  Junior  Class  in  Princeton 
University. 

19 


GOLDEN  LADS 

the  war.  An  old  peasant  woman,  deceived  be- 
cause of  the  darkness,  and  thinking  him  to  be  a 
German  Uhlan,  rushed  up  to  him  and  said,  "Look 
out — the  Belgians  are  here."  It  was  the  work  of 
these  spies  to  give  information  to  the  marauding 
Uhlans  as  to  whether  any  hostile  garrison  was  sta- 
tioned in  the  town.  If  no  troops  were  there  to  re- 
sist, a  band  of  a  dozen  Uhlans  could  easily  take  an 
entire  village.  But  if  the  village  had  a  protect- 
ing garrison  the  Germans  must  be  forewarned. 

Three  days  after  arriving  in  Belgium,  in  the 
early  fall  of  1914,  a  friend  and  I  met  a  German 
outpost,  one  of  the  Hussars.  We  fell  into  con- 
versation with  him  and  became  quite  friendly. 
He  had  no  cigarettes  and  we  shared  ours  with  him. 
He  could  speak  good  English,  and  he  let  us  walk 
beside  him  as  he  rode  slowly  along  on  his  way  to 
the  main  body  of  his  troops.  The  Germans  had 
won  the  day  and  there  seemed  to  be  nothing  at 
stake,  or  perhaps  he  did  not  expect  our  little  group 
would  be  long-lived,  nor  should  we  have  been  if 
the  German  plans  had  gone  through.  It  was  their 
custom  to  use  civilian  prisoners  as  a  protective 
screen  for  their  advancing  troops.  Whatever  his 

20 


THE  SPY 

motive,  after  we  had  walked  along  beside  his 
horse  for  a  little  distance,  he  pointed  out  to  us 
the  house  of  the  spy  whom  the  Germans  had  in 
that  village  of  Melle.  This  man  was  a  "half- 
breed"  Englishman,  who  came  out  of  his  house 
and  walked  over  to  the  Hussar  and  said : 

"You  want  to  keep  up  your  English,  for  you  '11 
soon  be  in  London." 

In  a  loud  voice,  for  the  benefit  of  his  Belgian 
neighbors,  he  shouted  out : 

"Look  out!  Those  fellows  shoot!  The  Ger- 
mans are  devils!" 

He  brought  out  wine  for  the  troops.  We  fol- 
lowed him  into  his  house,  where  he,  supposing  us 
to  be  friends  of  the  Germans,  asked  us  to  partake 
of  his  hospitality.  That  man  was  a  resident  of 
the  village,  a  friend  of  the  people,  but  "fixed" 
for  just  this  job  of  supplying  information  to  the 
invaders  when  the  time  came. 

During  my  five  weeks  in  Ghent  I  used  to  eat 
frequently  at  the  Cafe  Gambrinus,  where  the  pro- 
prietor assured  us  that  he  was  a  Swiss  and  in  deep 
sympathy  with  Belgians  and  Allies.  He  had 
a  large  custom.  When  the  Germans  captured 

21 


GOLDEN  LADS 

Ghent  he  altered  into  a  simon  pure  German  and 
friend  of  the  invaders.  His  place  now  is  the 
nightly  resort  of  German  officers. 

In  the  hotel  where  I  stayed  in  Ghent  the  pro- 
prietor, after  a  couple  of  days,  believing  me  to  be 
one  more  neutral  American,  told  me  he  was  a  Ger- 
man. He  went  on  to  say  what  a  mistake  the  Bel- 
gians made  to  oppose  the  Germans,  who  were  ir- 
resistible. That  was  his  return  to  the  city  and 
country  that  had  given  him  his  livelihood.  A  few 
hours  later  a  gendarme  friend  of  mine  told  me  to 
move  out  quickly,  as  we  were  in  the  house  of  a 
spy. 

Three  members  of  our  corps  in  Pervyse  had  evi- 
dence many  nights  of  a  spy  within  our  lines.  It 
was  part  of  the  routine  for  a  convoy  of  motor 
trucks  to  bring  ammunition  forward  to  the 
trenches.  The  enemy  during  the  day  would  get 
the  range  of  the  road  over  which  this  train  had  to 
pass.  Of  course,  each  night  the  time  of  ammu- 
nition moving  was  changed  in  an  attempt  to  foil 
the  German  fire.  But  this  was  of  no  avail,  for 
when  the  train  of  trucks  moved  along  the  road  to 
the  trenches  a  bright  flash  of  light  would  go  up 

22 


THE  SPY 

somewhere  within  our  lines,  telling  the  enemy  that 
it  was  time  to  fire  upon  the  convoy. 

Such  evidences  kept  reaching  us  of  German  gold 
at  work  on  the  very  country  we  were  occupying. 
Sometimes  the  money  itself. 

My  wife,  when  stationed  by  the  Belgian 
trenches  at  Pervyse,  asked  the  orderly  to  purchase 
potatoes,  giving  him  a  five-franc  piece.  He 
brought  back  the  potatoes  and  a  handful  of  change 
that  included  a  French  franc,  a  French  copper, 
a  Dutch  small  coin,  a  Belgian  ten-centime  bit,  and 
a  German  two-mark  piece  with  its  imperial  eagle. 
This  meant  that  some  one  in  the  ranks  or  among 
the  refugees  was  peddling  information  to  the 
enemy. 

In  early  October  my  wife  and  I  were  captured 
by  the  Uhlans  at  Zele.  Our  Flemish  driver,'  a 
Ghent  man,  began  expressing  his  friendliness  for 
them  in  fluent  German.  After  weeks  of  that  sort 
of  thing  we  became  suspicious  of  almost  every  one, 
so  thorough  and  widespread  had  been  the  bribery 
of  certain  of  the  poorer  element.  The  Germans 
had  sowed  their  seed  for  years  against  the  day 
when  they  would  release  their  troops  and  have 

23 


GOLDEN  LADS 

need  of  traitors  scattered  through  the  invaded 
country. 

The  thoroughness  of  this  bribery  differed  at 
different  villages.  In  one  burned  town  of  1500 
houses  we  found  approximately  100  houses  stand- 
ing intact,  with  German  script  in  chalk  on  their 
doors;  the  order  of  the  officer  not  to  burn.  This 
meant  the  dwellers  had  been  friendly  to  the  enemy 
in  certain  instances,  and  in  other  instances  that 
they  were  spies  for  the  Germans.  We  have  the 
photographs  of  those  chalked  houses  in  safe-keep- 
ing, against  such  time  as  there  is  a  direct  challenge 
on  the  facts  of  German  methods.  But  there  has 
come  no  challenge  of  facts — we  that  have  seen 
have  given  names,  dates  and  places — only  a  blan- 
ket denial  and  counter  charges  of  franc-tireur 
warfare,  as  carried  on  by  babies  in  arms,  white- 
haired  grandmothers  and  sick  women. 

In  October,  1914,  two  miles  outside  Ostend,  I 
was  arrested  as  a  spy  by  the  Belgians  and  marched 
through  the  streets  in  front  of  a  gun  in  the  hands 
of  a  very  young  and  very  nervous  soldier.  The 
Etat  Major  told  me  that  German  officers  had  been 
using  American  passports  to  enter  the  Allied  lines 

24 


THE  SPY 

and  learn  the  numbers  and  disposition  of  troops. 
They  had  to  arrest  Americans  on  sight  and  find 
out  if  they  were  masqueraders.  A  little  later  one 
of  our  American  ambassadors  verified  this  by  say- 
ing to  me  that  American  passports  had  been  fla- 
grantly abused  for  German  purposes. 

All  this  devious  inside  work,  misusing  the  hos- 
pitality of  friendly,  trustful  nations,  this  buying 
up  of  weak  individuals,  this  laying  the  traps  on 
neutral  ground — all  this  treachery  in  peace  times 
— deserves  a  second  Bryce  report.  The  atrocities 
are  the  product  of  the  treachery.  This  patient, 
insidious  spy  system,  eating  away  at  the  vitality 
of  the  Allied  powers,  results  in  such  horrors  as  I 
have  witnessed. 


THE  ATROCITY 

WHEN  the  very  terrible  accounts  of  fright- 
fulness  visited  on  peasants  by  the  invad- 
ing German  army  crossed  the  Channel  to  London, 
I  believed  that  we  had  one  more  "formula"  story. 
I  was  fortified  against  unproved  allegations  by 
thirteen  years  of  newspaper  and  magazine  inves- 
tigation and  by  professional  experience  in  social 
work.  A  few  months  previously  I  had  investi- 
gated the  "poison  needle"  stories  of  how  a  girl, 
rendered  insensible  by  a  drug,  was  borne  away  in  a 
taxicab  to  a  house  of  ill  fame.  The  cases  proved 
to  be  victims  of  hysteria.  At  another  time,  I  had 
looked  up  certain  incidents  of  "white  slavery," 
where  young  and  innocent  victims  were  suddenly 
and  dramatically  ruined.  I  had  found  the  cases 
to  be  more  complex  than  the  picturesque  state- 
ments of  fiction  writers  implied.  Again,  by  the 
courtesy  of  the  United  States  Government,  De- 
partment of  Justice,  I  had  studied  investigations 

26 


THE  ATROCITY 

into  the  relation  of  a  low  wage  to  the  life  of  im- 
morality. These  had  shown  me  that  many  factors 
in  the  home,  in  the  training,  in  the  mental  condi- 
tion, often  contributed  to  the  result.  I  had  grown 
sceptical  of  the  "plain"  statement  of  a  complex 
matter,  and  peculiarly  hesitant  in  accepting  ac- 
counts of  outrage  and  cruelty.  It  was  in  this 
spirit  that  I  crossed  to  Belgium.  To  this  extent, 
I  had  a  pro-German  leaning. 

On  September  7,  1914,  with  two  companions, 
I  was  present  at  the  skirmish  between  Germans 
and  Belgians  at  Melle,  a  couple  of  miles  east  of 
Ghent.  We  walked  to  the  German  line,  where 
a  blue-eyed  young  Hussar  officer,  Rhinebeck,  of 
Stramm,  Holstein,  led  us  into  a  trap  by  permitting 
us  to  walk  along  after  him  and  his  men  as  they 
rode  back  to  camp  beyond  Melle.  We  walked 
for  a  quarter  mile.  At  our  right  a  barn  was  burn- 
ing brightly.  On  our  left  the  homes  of  the  peas- 
ants of  Melle  were  burning,  twenty-six  little  yel- 
low brick  houses,  each  with  a  separate  fire.  It 
was  not  a  conflagration,  by  one  house  burning  and 
gradually  lighting  the  next.  The  fires  were  well 
started  and  at  equal  intensity  in  each  house.  The 

2? 


GOLDEN  LADS 

walls  between  the  houses  were  still  intact.  The 
twenty-six  fires  burned  slowly  and  thoroughly 
through  the  night. 

These  three  thousand  German  soldiers  and  their 
officers  were  neither  drunk  nor  riotous.  The  dis- 
cipline was  excellent.  The  burning  was  a  clean- 
cut,  cold-blooded  piece  of  work.  It  was  a  piece 
of  punishment.  Belgian  soldiers  had  resisted  the 
German  army.  If  Belgian  soldiers  resist,  peasant 
non-combatants  must  be  killed.  That  inspires 
terror.  That  teaches  the  lesson:  "Do  not  op- 
pose Germany.  It  is  death  to  oppose  her — death 
to  your  wife  and  child." 

We  were  surrounded  by  soldiers  and  four  sen- 
tries put  over  us.  Peasants  who  walked  too  close 
to  the  camp  were  brought  in  and  added  to  our 
group  of  prisoners,  till,  all  told,  we  numbered 
thirty.  A  peasant  lying  next  to  me  watched  his 
own  house  burn  to  pieces. 

Another  of  the  peasants  was  an  old  man,  of 
weak  mind.  He  kept  babbling  to  himself.  It 
would  have  been  obvious  to  a  child  that  he  was 
foolish.  The  German  sentry  ordered  silence. 
The  old  fellow  muttered  on  in  unconsciousness 

28 


THE  ATROCITY 

of  his  surroundings.  The  sentry  drew  back  his 
bayonet  to  run  him  through.  A  couple  of  the 
peasants  pulled  the  old  man  flat  to  the  ground  and 
stifled  his  talking. 

At  five  o'clock  in  the  morning  German  stretcher 
bearers  marched  behind  the  burned  houses.  Out 
of  the  house  of  the  peasant  lying  next  to  me  three 
bodies  were  carried.  He  broke  into  a  long,  slow 
sobbing. 

At  six  o'clock  a  monoplane  sailed  overhead, 
bringing  orders  to  our  detachment.  The  troops 
intended  for  Ghent  were  turned  toward  Brussels. 
The  field  artillery,  which  had  been  rolled  toward 
the  west,  was  swung  about  to  the  east.  An  offi- 
cer headed  us  toward  Ghent  and  let  us  go.  If 
the  Germans  had  marched  into  Ghent  we  would 
have  been  of  value  as  a  cover  for  the  troops.  But 
for  the  return  to  Brussels  we  were  only  a  nuisance. 
We  hurried  away  toward  Ghent.  As  we  walked 
through  a  farmyard  we  saw  a  farmer  lying  at 
full  length  dead  in  his  dooryard.  We  passed  the 
convent  school  of  Melle,  where  Catholic  sisters 
live.  The  front  yard  was  strewed  with  furniture, 
with  bedding,  with  the  contents  of  the  rooms. 

29 


GOLDEN  LADS 

The  yard  was  about  four  hundred  feet  long  and 
two  hundred  feet  deep.  It  was  dotted  with  this 
intimate  household  stuff  for  the  full  area.  I  made 
inquiry  and  found  that  no  sister  had  been  violated 
or  bayoneted.  The  soldiers  had  merely  ransacked 
the  place. 

One  of  my  companions  in  this  Melle  experience 
was  A.  Radclyffe  Dugmore,  formerly  of  the  Play- 
ers Club,  New  York,  a  well-known  naturalist,  au- 
thor of  books  on  big  game  in  Africa,  the  beaver, 
and  the  caribou.  For  many  years  he  was  con- 
nected with  Doubleday,  Page  &  Co.  His  present 
address  is  Crete  Hill,  South  Nutfield,  Surrey. 

At  other  times  and  places,  German  troops  have 
not  rested  content  with  the  mere  terrorization  and 
humiliation  of  religious  sisters.  On  February  12, 
1916,  the  German  Wireless  from  Berlin  states 
that  Cardinal  Mercier  was  urged  to  investigate  the 
allegation  of  German  soldiers  attacking  Belgian 
nuns,  and  that  he  declined.  As  long  as  the  Ger- 
man Government  has  seen  fit  to  revive  the  record 
of  their  own  brutality,  I  present  what  follows. 

A  New  York  physician  whom  I  know  sends  me 
this  statement: 

30 


THE  ATROCITY 

"I  was  dining  in  London  in  the  middle  of  last 
April  with  a  friend,  a  medical  man,  and  I  ex- 
pressed doubt  as  to  the  truth  of  the  stories  of 
atrocity.  I  said  I  had  combatted  such  stories 
often  in  America.  In  reply,  he  asked  me  to  visit 
a  house  which  had  been  made  over  into  an  ob- 
stetrical hospital  for  Belgian  nuns.  I  went  with 
him  to  the  hospital.  Here  over  a  hundred  nuns 
had  been  and  were  being  cared  for." 

On  a  later  Sunday  in  September  I  visited  the 
Municipal  Hospital  of  Ghent.  In  Salle  (Hall) 
17,  I  met  and  talked  with  Martha  Tas,  a  peasant 
girl  of  St.  Gilles  (near  Termonde).  As  she  was 
escaping  by  train  from  the  district,  and  when  she 
was  between  Alost  and  Audeghem,  she  told  me 
that  German  soldiers  aimed  rifle  fire  at  the  train 
of  peasants.  She  was  wounded  by  a  bullet  in  the 
thigh.  My  companion  on  this  visit  was  William 
R.  Renton,  at  one  time  a  resident  of  Andover, 
Massachusetts.  His  present  address  is  the  Cov- 
entry Ordnance  Works,  Coventry. 

A  friend  of  mine  has  been  lieutenant  in  a  bat- 
tery of  75's  stationed  near  Pervyse.  His  summer 
home  is  a  little  distance  out  from  Liege.  His 

31 


GOLDEN  LADS 

wife,  sister-in-law,  and  his  three  children  were  in 
the  house  when  the  Germans  came.  Peasants, 
driven  from  their  village,  hid  in  the  cellar.  His 
sister  took  one  child  and  hid  in  a  closet.  His  wife 
took  the  two-year-old  baby  and  the  older  child 
and  hid  in  another  closet.  The  troops  entered 
the  house,  looted  it  and  set  it  on  fire.  As  they 
left  they  fired  into  the  cellar.  The  mother  rushed 
from  her  hiding  place,  went  to  her  desk  and  found 
that  her  money  and  the  family  jewels,  one  a  gift 
from  the  husband's  family  and  handed  down  gen- 
eration by  generation,  had  been  stolen.  With  the 
sister,  the  baby  in  arms,  the  two  other  children  and 
the  peasants,  she  ran  out  of  the  garden.  They 
were  fired  on.  They  hid  in  a  wood.  Then,  for 
two  days,  they  walked.  The  raw  potatoes  which 
they  gathered  by  the  way  were  unfit  for  the  little 
one.  Without  money,  and  ill  and  weakened,  they 
reached  Holland.  This  lady  is  in  a  safe  place 
now,  and  her  testimony  in  person  is  available. 

The  apologists  of  the  widespread  reign  of 
frightfulness  say  that  war  is  always  "like  that," 
that  individual  drunken  soldiers  have  always 
broken  loose  and  committed  terrible  acts.  This 

32 


THE  ATROCITY 

defense  does  not  meet  the  facts.  It  meets  neither 
the  official  orders,  nor  the  cold  method,  nor  the 
immense  number  of  proved  murders.  The  Ger- 
man policy  was  ordered  from  the  top.  It  was 
carried  out  by  officers  and  men  systematically,  un- 
der discipline.  The  German  War  Book,  issued 
by  the  General  Staff,  and  used  by  officers,  cleverly 
justifies  these  acts.  They  are  recorded  by  the 
German  soldiers  themselves  in  their  diaries,  of 
which  photographic  reproductions  are  obtainable 
in  any  large  library.  The  diaries  were  found  on 
the  persons  of  dead  and  wounded  Germans.  The 
name  of  the  man  and  his  company  are  given. 

On  Sunday,  September  27,  I  was  present  at  the 
battle  of  Alost,  where  peasants  came  running  into 
our  lines  from  the  German  side  of  the  canal.  In 
spite  of  shell,  shrapnel,  rifle,  and  machine  fire, 
these  peasants  crossed  to  us.  The  reason  they  had 
for  running  into  fire  was  that  the  Germans  were 
torturing  their  neighbors  with  the  bayonet.  One 
peasant,  on  the  other  side  of  the  canal,  hurried 
toward  us  under  the  fire,  with  a  little  girl  on  his 
right  shoulder. 

On  Tuesday,  September  29,  I  visited  Wetteren 

33 


GOLDEN  LADS 

Hospital.  I  went  in  company  with  the  Prince 
L.  de  Croy,  the  Due  D'Ursel,  a  senator;  the 
Count  de  Briey,  Intendant  de  la  Liste  Civile  du 
Roy,  and  the  Count  Retz  la  Barre  (all  of  the 
Garde  du  General  de  Wette,  Divisions  de  Cava- 
lerie).  One  at  least  of  these  gentlemen  is  as  well 
and  as  favorably  known  in  this  country  as  in  his 
own.  I  took  a  young  linguist,  who  was  kind 
enough  to  act  as  secretary  for  me.  In  the  hospi- 
tal I  found  eleven  peasants  with  bayonet  wounds 
upon  them — men,  women  and  a  child — who  had 
been  marched  in  front  of  the  Germans  at  Alost 
as  a  cover  for  the  troops,  and  cut  with  bayonets 
when  they  tried  to  dodge  the  firing.  A  priest  was 
ministering  to  them,  bed  by  bed.  Sisters  were 
in  attendance.  The  priest  led  us  to  the  cot  of 
one  of  the  men.  On  Sunday  morning,  Septem- 
ber 27,  the  peasant,  Leopold  de  Man,  of  No. 
90,  Hovenier-Straat,  Alost,  was  hiding  in  the 
house  with  his  sister,  in  the  cellar.  The  Germans 
made  a  fire  of  the  table  and  chairs  in  the  upper 
room.  Then,  catching  sight  of  Leopold,  they 
struck  him  with  the  butts  of  their  guns  and  forced 
him  to  pass  through  the  fire.  Then,  taking  him 

34 


THE  ATROCITY 

outside,  they  struck  him  to  the  ground  and  gave 
him  a  blow  over  the  head  with  a  gunstock  and  a 
cut  of  the  bayonet,  which  pierced  his  thigh  all  the 
way  through. 

"In  spite  of  my  wound,"  said  he,  "they  made 
me  pass  between  their  lines,  giving  me  still  more 
blows  of  the  gun-butt  in  the  back  in  order  to  make 
me  march.  There  were  seventeen  or  eighteen  per- 
sons with  me.  They  placed  us  in  front  of  their 
lines  and  menaced  us  with  their  revolvers,  crying 
out  that  they  will  make  us  pay  for  the  losses  they 
have  suffered  at  Alost.  So  we  march  in  front  of 
the  troops. 

"When  the  battle  began  we  threw  ourselves  on 
our  faces  to  the  ground,  but  they  forced  us  to  rise 
again.  At  a  certain  moment,  when  the  Germans 
were  obliged  to  retire,  we  succeeded  in  escaping 
down  side  streets." 

The  priest  led  the  way  to  the  cot  of  a  peasant 
whose  cheeks  had  the  spot  of  fever.  He  was 
Frans  Meulebroeck,  of  No.  62,  Drie  Sleutelstraat, 
Alost.  Sometimes  in  loud  bursts  of  terror,  and 
then  falling  back  into  a  monotone,  he  talked  with 
us. 

35 


GOLDEN  LADS 

"They  broke  open  the  door  of  my  home,"  he 
said,  "they  seized  me  and  knocked  me  down.  In 
front  of  my  door  the  corpse  of  a  German  lay 
stretched  out.  The  Germans  said  to  me:  'You 
are  going  to  pay  for  that  to  us.'  A  few  moments 
later  they  gave  me  a  bayonet  cut  in  my  leg.  They 
sprinkled  naphtha  in  my  house  and  set  it  afire. 
My  son  was  struck  down  in  the  street  and  I  was 
marched  in  front  of  the  German  troops.  I  do  not 
know  even  yet  the  fate  of  my  son." 

Gradually  as  the  peasant  talked  the  time  of  his 
suffering  came  on  him.  His  eyes  began  to  see  it 
again  in  front  of  him.  They  became  fixed  and 
wild,  the  white  of  them  visible.  His  voice  was 
shrill  and  broken  with  sobs. 

"My  boy,"  he  said,  "I  have  n't  seen  him."  His 
body  shook  with  sobbing. 

At  my  request  the  young  man  with  me  took 
down  the  statements  of  these  two  peasants,  turn- 
ing them  into  French  from  the  Flemish,  with  the 
aid  of  the  priest.  In  the  presence  of  the  priest 
and  one  of  the  sisters  the  two  peasants  signed,  each 
man,  his  statement,  making  his  mark. 

Our  group  passed  into  the  next  room,  where  the 

36 


THE  ATROCITY 

wounded  women  were  gathered.  A  sister  led  us 
to  the  bedside  of  a  very  old  woman,  perhaps 
eighty  years  old.  She  had  thin  white  hair,  that 
straggled  across  the  pillow.  There  was  no  motion 
to  the  body,  except  for  faint  breathing.  She  was 
cut  through  the  thigh  with  a  bayonet. 

I  went  across  the  room  and  found  a  little  girl, 
twelve  years  old.  She  was  propped  up  in  bed 
and  half  bent  over,  as  if  she  had  been  broken  at 
the  breast  bone.  Her  body  whistled  with  each 
breath.  One  of  our  ambulance  corps  went  out 
next  day  to  the  hospital — Dr.  Donald  Renton. 
He  writes  me: 

"I  went  out  with  Davidson,  the  American  sculp- 
tor, and  Yates,  the  cinema  man,  and  there  had 
been  brought  into  the  hospital  the  previous  day 
the  little  girl  you  speak  of.  She  had  a  gaping 
wound  on,  I  think,  the  right  side  of  her  back, 
and  died  the  next  day." 

Dr.  Ren  ton's  address  is  1 10  Hill  Street,  Garnet 
Hill,  Glasgow. 

The  young  man  who  took  down  the  record  is 
named  E.  de  Niemira,  a  British  subject.  He  made 
the  report  of  what  we  had  seen  to  the  Bryce  Com- 

37 


GOLDEN  LADS 

mittee.  These  cases  which  I  witnessed  appear  in 
the  Brycc  Report  under  the  heading  of  "Alost."  * 

1When  this  record  was  first  made  public  the  "New  York 
Tribune"  stated  editorially: — 

"The  writer  of  the  foregoing  communication  was  for  several 
years  a  member  of  'The  Tribune'  staff.  For  the  utter  trust- 
worthiness of  any  statement  made  by  Mr.  Gleason,  this  news- 
paper is  willing  to  vouch.  Mr.  Gleason  was  at  the  front  car- 
ing for  the  Belgian  wounded.  He  speaks  with  full  knowledge 
and  complete  authority  and  'The  Tribune'  is  glad  to  be  able 
to  submit  to  its  readers  a  first-hand,  eyewitness  account  of 
atrocities  written  by  an  American.  It  calls  attention  again  to 
the  fact,  cited  by  Mr.  Gleason,  that  his  testimony  is  included  in 
the  Bryce  Report,  which  should  give  Americans  new  insight 
into  the  value  of  this  document." 

When  Theodore  Roosevelt  read  this  record  of  German  atroc- 
ity, he  made  the  following  public  statement: 

"Remember,  there  is  not  the  slightest  room  for  honest  ques- 
tion either  as  to  the  dreadful,  the  unspeakably  hideous,  out- 
rages committed  on  the  Belgians,  or  as  to  the  fact  that  these 
outrages  were  methodically  committed  by  the  express  command 
of  the  German  Government  in  order  to  terrorize  both  the  Bel- 
gians and  among  neutrals  those  men  who  are  as  cold  and  timid 
and  selfish  as  our  governmental  leaders  have  shown  themselves 
to  be.  Let  any  man  who  doubts  read  the  statement  of  an 
American  eyewitness  of  these  fearful  atrocities,  Mr.  Arthur  H. 
Gleason,  in  the  'New  York  Tribune'  of  November  25,  1915." 

From  the  Bryce  Report,  English  edition,  Page  167. 

British  subject: — 

"The  girl  was  at  the  point  of  death.  Mr.  G was  with 

me  and  can  corroborate  me  as  to  this  and  also  as  to  the  other 
facts  mentioned  below.  On  the  same  day  at  the  same  place 

38 


THE  ATROCITY 

Of  such  is  the  Bryce  Report  made:  first-hand 
witness  by  men  like  myself,  who  know  what  they 
know,  who  are  ready  for  any  test  to  be  applied, 
who  made  careful  notes,  who  had  witnesses. 

"Why  do  the  Germans  do  these  things'?  It  is 
not  war.  It  is  cruel  and  wrong,"  that  is  a  remark 
I  heard  from  noblemen  and  common  soldiers  alike. 
Such  acts  are  beyond  the  understanding  of  the 
Belgian  people.  Their  soldiers  are  kindly,  good- 
humored,  fearless.  Alien  women  and  children 
would  be  safe  in  their  hands.  They  do  not  see 
why  the  Germans  bring  suffering  to  the  innocent. 

A  few  understand.  They  know  it  is  a  scientific 
panic  which  the  German  army  was  seeking  to  cul- 
tivate. They  see  that  these  acts  are  not  done  in 

I  saw  one  L.  de  M .  I  took  this  statement  from  him.  .  .  . 

He  signed  his  statement  in  my  pocket  book,  and  I  hold  my  pocket 
book  at  the  disposal  of  the  Belgian  and  English  authorities. 

"I  also  saw  at  the  hospital  an  old  woman  of  eighty  who  was 
run  clean  through  by  a  bayonet  thrust. 

"I  next  went  up  to  another  wounded  Belgian  in  the  same 

ward.  His  name  was  F.  M .  I  wrote  his  statement  in  my 

pocket  book  and  he  signed  it  after  having  read  it." 

The  full  statement  in  the  Bryce  Report  of  the-  atrocities  which 
I  witnessed  covers  a  page.  The  above  sentences  are  extracts. 
Mr.  Niemira  had  neglected  to  make  a  note  of  the  exact  date  in 
his  pocket  book,  and  calls  it  "about  the  xsth  of  September."  It 
was  September  29. 

39 


GOLDEN  LADS 

the  wilful  abandon  of  a  few  drunken  soldiers,  be- 
yond discipline,  but  that  they  belong  to  a  cool, 
careful  method  by  means  of  which  the  German 
staff  hoped  to  reduce  a  population  to  servi- 
tude. The  Germans  regard  these  mutilations  as 
pieces  of  necessary  surgery.  The  young  blond 
barmaid  of  the  Quatrecht  Inn  told  us  on  October 
4  that  a  German  captain  came  and  cried  like  a 
baby  in  the  taproom  on  the  evening  of  September 
7,  after  he  had  laid  waste  Quatrecht  and  Melle. 
To  her  fanciful,  untrained  mind  he  was  thinking 
of  his  own  wife  and  children.  So,  at  least,  she 
thought  as  she  watched  him,  after  serving  him  in 
his  thirst. 

One  of  the  sentries  patted  the  shoulder  of  the 
peasant  at  Melle  when  he  learned  that  the  man 
had  had  the  three  members  of  his  family  done  to 
death.  Personally,  he  was  sorry  for  the  man,  but 
orders  were  orders. 

I  spent  September  13  and  September  23  in  Ter- 
monde.  Ten  days  before  my  first  visit  Termonde 
was  a  pretty  town  of  11,000  inhabitants.  On 
their  first  visit  the  Germans  burned  eleven  hun- 
dred of  the  fifteen  hundred  houses.  They  burned 

40 


THE  ATROCITY 

the  Church  of  St.  Benedict,  the  Church  of  St.  Ro- 
cus,  three  other  churches,  a  hospital,  and  an  or- 
phanage. They  burned  that  town  not  by  acci- 
dent of  shell  fire  and  general  conflagration,  but 
methodically,  house  by  house.  In  the  midst  of 
charred  ruins  I  came  on  single  houses  standing, 
many  of  them,  and  on  their  doors  was  German 
writing  in  chalk — "Nicht  Verbrennen.  Gute 
Leute  wohnen  hier."  Sometimes  it  would  be 
simply  "Nicht  Verbrennen,"  sometimes  only 
"Gute  Leute,"  but  always  that  piece  of  German 
script  was  enough  to  save  that  house,  though  to 
the  right  and  left  of  it  were  ruins.  On  several 
of  the  saved  houses  the  name  of  the  German  offi- 
cer was  scribbled  who  gave  the  order  to  spare. 
About  one  hundred  houses  were  chalked  in  the 
way  I  have  described.  All  these  were  unscathed 
by  the  fire,  though  they  stood  in  streets  otherwise 
devastated.  The  remaining  three  hundred  houses 
had  the  good  luck  to  stand  at  the  outskirts  and 
on  streets  unvisited  by  the  house-to-house  incen- 
diaries. 

Four  days  after  my  first  visit  the  Germans 
burned  again  the  already  wrecked  town,  turning 

43 


GOLDEN  LADS 

their  attention  to  the  neglected  three  hundred 
houses.  I  went  in  as  soon  as  I  could  safely  enter 
the  town,  and  that  was  on  the  Wednesday  after. 

As  companions  in  Termonde  I  had  Tennyson 
Jesse,  Radclyffe  Dugmore,  and  William  R.  Ren- 
ton.  Mr.  Dugmore  took  photographs  of  the 
chalked  houses. 

"Build  a  fence  around  Termonde,"  suggested 
a  Ghent  manufacturer,  "leave  the  ruins  untouched. 
Let  the  place  stand  there,  with  its  burned  houses, 
churches,  orphanage,  hospital,  factories,  to  show 
the  world  what  German  culture  is.  It  will  be  a 
monument  to  their  methods  of  conducting  war. 
There  will  be  no  need  of  saying  anything.  That 
is  all  the  proof  we  need.  Then  throw  open  the 
place  to  visitors  from  all  the  world,  as  soon  as  this 
war  is  over.  Let  them  draw  their  own  conclu- 
sions." 


44 


BALLAD  OF  THE  GERMANS 

IN  Wetteren  Hospital,  Flanders,  the  writer  saw 
a  little  peasant  girl  dying  from  the  bayonet 
wounds  in  her  back  which  the  German  soldiers 
had  given  her. 

Cain  slew  only  a  brother, 

A  lad  who  was  fair  and  strong, 
His  murder  was  careless  and  honest, 

A  heated  and  sudden  wrong. 

And  Judas  was  kindly  and  pleasant, 
For  he  snared  an  invincible  man. 

But  you — you  have  spitted  the  children, 
As  they  toddled  and  stumbled  and  ran. 

She  heard  you  sing  on  the  high-road, 
She  thought  you  were  gallant  and  gay; 

Such  men  as  the  peasants  of  Flanders : 
The  friends  of  a  child  at  play. 

45 


GOLDEN  LADS 

She  saw  the  sun  on  your  helmets, 
The  sparkle  of  glancing  light. 

She  saw  your  bayonets  flashing, 

And  she  laughed  at  your  Prussian  might. 

Then  you  gave  her  death  for  her  laughter, 
As  you  looked  on  her  mischievous  face. 

You  hated  the  tiny  peasant, 

With  the  hate  of  your  famous  race. 

You  were  not  frenzied  and  angry; 

You  were  cold  and  efficient  and  keen. 
Your  thrust  was  as  thorough  and  deadly 

As  the  stroke  of  a  faithful  machine. 

You  stabbed  her  deep  with  your  rifle : 

You  had  good  reason  to  sing, 
As  you  footed  it  on  through  Flanders 

Past  the  broken  and  quivering  thing. 

Something  impedes  your  advancing, 
A  dragging  has  come  on  your  hosts. 

And  Paris  grows  dim  now,  and  dimmer, 
Through  the  blur  of  your  raucous  boasts. 


BALLAD  OF  THE  GERMANS 

Your  singing  is  sometimes  broken 
By  guttural  German  groans. 

Your  ankles  are  wet  with  her  bleeding, 
Your  pike  is  blunt  from  her  bones. 

The  little  peasant  has  tripped  you. 

She  hangs  to  your  bloody  stride. 
And  the  dimpled  hands  are  fastened 

Where  they  fumbled  before  she  died. 


47 


THE  STEAM  ROLLER 

THE  Steam  Roller,  the  final  method,  now  op- 
erating in  Belgium  to  flatten  her  for  all 
time,  is  the  most  deadly  and  universal  of  the 
three.  It  is  a  calculated  process  to  break  the  hu- 
man spirit.  People  speak  as  if  the  injury  done 
Belgium  was  a  thing  of  the  past.  It  is  at  its 
height  now.  The  spy  system  with  its  clerks,  wait- 
ers, tourists,  business  managers,  reached  directly 
only  some  thousands  of  persons.  The  atrocities 
wounded  and  killed  many  thousands  of  old  men, 
women,  and  children.  But  the  German  occupa- 
tion and  sovereignty  at  the  present  moment  are 
denationalizing  more  than  six  million  people. 
The  German  conquerors  operate  their  Steam 
Roller  by  clever  lies,  thus  separating  Belgium 
from  her  real  friends;  by  taxation,  thus  breaking 
Belgium  economically;  by  enforced  work  on  food 
supplies,  railways,  and  ammunition,  thus  forcing 
Belgian  peasants  to  feed  their  enemy's  army  and 


THE  STEAM  ROLLER 

destroy  their  own  army,  and  so  making  unwilling 
traitors  out  of  patriots ;  by  fines  and  imprisonment 
that  harass  the  individual  Belgian  who  retains  any 
sense  of  nationality;  by  official  slander  from  Ber- 
lin that  the  Belgians  are  the  guilty  causes  of  their 
own  destruction;  and  finally  by  the  fact  of  sov- 
ereignty itself,  that  at  one  stroke  breaks  the  in- 
most spirit  of  a  free  nation. 

I  was  still  in  Ghent  when  the  Germans  moved 
up  to  the  suburbs. 

"I  can  put  my  artillery  on  Ghent,"  said  the  Ger- 
man officer  to  the  American  vice-consul. 

That  talk  is  typical  of  the  tone  of  voice  used 
to  Belgians :  threat  backed  by  murder. 

The  whole  policy  of  the  Germans  of  late  is  to 
treat  the  Belgian  matter  as  a  thing  accomplished. 

"It  is  over.     Let  bygones  be  bygones." 

It  is  a  process  like  the  trapping  of  an  innocent 
woman,  and  when  she  is  trapped,  saying, 

"Now  you  are  compromised,  anyway,  so  you 
had  better  submit." 

A  friend  of  mine  who  remained  hi  Ghent  after 
the  German  occupation,  had  German  officers  bil- 
letted  in  his  home.  Daily,  industriously,  they 

49 


GOLDEN  LADS 

said  to  him  that  the  English  had  been  poor  friends 
of  his  country,  that  they  had  been  late  in  coming 
to  the  rescue.  Germany  was  the  friend,  not  Eng- 
land. In  the  homes  throughout  Belgium,  these 
unbidden  guests  are  claiming  slavery  is  a  bene- 
ficent institution,  that  it  is  better  to  be  ruled  by 
the  German  military,  and  made  efficient  for  Ger- 
man ends,  than  to  continue  a  free  people. 

For  a  year,  our  Red  Cross  Corps  worked  under 
the  direction  and  authority  of  the  Belgian  prime 
minister,  Baron  de  Broqueville.  The  prime  min- 
ister in  the  name  of  his  government  has  sent  to 
this  country  an  official  protest  against  the  new  tax 
levied  by  the  Germans  on  his  people.  The  total 
tax  for  the  German  occupation  amounts  to  $192,- 
000,000.  He  writes : 

"The  German  military  occupation  during  the 
last  fifteen  months  has  entirely  prevented  all  for- 
eign trade,  has  paralyzed  industrial  activity,  and 
has  reduced  the  majority  of  the  laboring  classes 
to  enforced  idleness.  Upon  the  impoverished 
Belgian  population  whom  Germany  has  unjustly 
attacked,  upon  whom  she  has  brought  want  and 
distress,  who  have  been  barely  saved  from  starva- 

50 


One  of  the  dangerous  Belgian  franc-tireurs, 
who  made  it  necessary  for  the  German  Army 
to  burn  and  bayonet  babies  and  old  women. 
His  name  is  Caspar.  He  is  three  years  eld. 


THE  STEAM  ROLLER 

tion  by  the  importation  of  food  which  Germany 
should  have  provided — upon  this  population,  Ger- 
many now  imposes  a  new  tax,  equal  in  amount  to 
the  enormous  tax  she  has  already  imposed  and  is 
regularly  collecting." 

The  Belgian  Legation  has  protested  unavail- 
ingly  to  our  Government  that  Germany,  in  viola- 
tion of  The  Hague  Conventions,  has  forced  Bel- 
gian workmen  to  perform  labor  for  the  German 
army.  Belgian  Railway  employees  at  Malines, 
Luttre  and  elsewhere  refused  to  perform  work 
which  would  have  released  from  the  transporta- 
tion service  and  made  available  for  the  trenches 
an  entire  German  Army  Corps.  These  Belgian 
workmen  were  subjected  to  coersive  measures, 
which  included  starvation  and  cruel  punishments. 
Because  of  these  penalties  on  Belgians  refusing  to 
be  traitors,  many  went  to  hospitals  in  Germany, 
and  others  returned  broken  in  health  to  Bel- 
gium. 

After  reading  the  chapter  on  the  German  spy 
system,  a  Belgian  wrote  me : 

"That  spying  business  is  not  yet  the  worst. 
Since  then,  the  Germans  have  succeeded  in  outdo- 

53 


GOLDEN  LADS 

ing  all  that.  The  basest  and  the  worst  that  one 
can  dream  of  is  it  not  that  campaign  of  slander 
and  blackmail  which  they  originated  after  their 
violation  of  Belgium's  neutrality?  Of  course 
they  did  it — as  a  murderer  who  slanders  his  vic- 
tim— in  the  hope  to  justify  their  crime." 

It  is  evil  to  murder  non-combatants.  It  is  more 
evil  to  "rationalize"  the  act — to  invent  a  moral 
reason  for  doing  an  infamous  thing.  First,  Bel- 
gium suffered  a  vivisection,  a  veritable  martyr- 
dom. Now,  she  is  officially  informed  by  her  exe- 
cutioners that  she  was  the  guilty  party.  She  is 
not  allowed  to  protest.  She  must  sit  quietly  un- 
der the  charge  that  her  sacrifice  was  not  a  sacrifice 
at  all,  but  the  penalty  paid  for  her  own  misbe- 
havior. This  is  a  more  cruel  thing  than  the  spy- 
ing that  sapped  her  and  the  atrocities  practised 
upon  her,  because  it  is  more  cruel  to  take  a  man's 
honor  than  his  property  and  his  life. 

"If  the  peasants  had  stayed  in  their  houses,  they 
would  have  been  safe." 

When  they  stayed  in  their  houses  they  were 
burned  along  with  the  houses.  I  saw  this  done 
on  September  7,  1914,  at  Melle. 

54 


THE  STEAM  ROLLER 

"The  peasants  shot  from  their  houses  at  the  ad- 
vancing German  army." 

I  saw  German  atrocities.  The  peasants  did 
not  shoot.  It  is  the  old  familiar  formula  of  the 
franc-tireur.  That  means  that  the  peasant,  not 
a  soldier,  dressed  in  the  clothing  of  a  civilian,  takes 
advantage  of  his  immunity  as  a  noncombatant,  to 
secrete  a  rifle,  and  from  some  shelter  shoot  at  the 
enemy  army.  The  Bishop  of  Namur  writes : 

"It  is  evident  that  the  German  army  trod  the 
Belgian  soil  and  carried  out  the  invasion  with  the 
preconceived  idea  that  it  would  meet  with  bands 
of  this  sort,  a  reminiscence  of  the  war  of  1870. 
But  German  imagination  will  not  suffice  to  create 
that  which  does  not  exist. 

"There  never  existed  a  single  body  of  francs- 
tireurs  in  Belgium. 

"No  'isolated  instance'  even  is  known  of  civil- 
ians having  fired  upon  the  troops,  although  there 
would  have  been  no  occasion  for  surprise  if  any 
individual  person  had  committed  an  excess.  In 
several  of  our  villages  the  population  was  exter- 
minated because,  as  the  military  authorities  al- 
leged, a  major  had  been  killed  or  a  young  girl  had 

55 


GOLDEN  LADS 

attempted  to  kill  an  officer,  and  so  forth.  ...  In 
no  case  has  an  alleged  culprit  been  discovered  and 
designated  by  name." 

This  lie — that  the  peasants  brought  their  own 
death  on  themselves — was  rehearsed  before  the 
war,  as  a  carefully  learned  lesson.  The  army 
came  prepared  to  find  the  excuse  for  the  methodi- 
cal outrages  which  they  practised.  In  the  fight 
in  the  Dixmude  district,  a  German  officer  of  the 
202  e  Infantry  had  a  letter  with  this  sentence  on 
his  body : 

"There  are  a  lot  of  francs-tireurs  with  the 
enemy." 

There  were  none.  He  had  found  what  he  had 
been  drilled  to  find,  in  the  years  of  preparedness. 
The  front  lines  of  the  Yser  were  raked  clear  by 
shell,  rifle,  and  machine-gun  fire.  The  district 
was  in  ruins.  I  know,  because  I  worked  there 
with  our  Red  Cross  Corps  through  those  three 
weeks.  The  humorous  explanation  of  this  is 
given  by  one  of  the  Fusilier  Marin  Lieutenants 
— that  the  blue  cap  and  the  red  pompon  of  the 
famous  fighting  sailors  of  France  looked  strangely 
to  the  Germans,  who  took  the  wearers  for  francs- 

56 


THE  STEAM  ROLLER 

tireurs,  terror  suggesting  the  idea.  But  this  is  the 
kindly  humor  of  Brittany.  The  saucy  sailor  caps 
could  not  have  looked  strangely  to  German  eyes, 
because  a  few  weeks  earlier  those  "Girls  with  the 
red  pompon"  had  held  the  German  army  corps  at 
Melle,  and  not  even  terror  could  have  made  them 
look  other  than  terribly  familiar.  No.  The  offi- 
cers had  been  faithfully  trained  to  find  militant 
peasants  under  arms,  and  to  send  back  letters  and 
reports  of  their  discovery,  which  could  later  be 
used  in  official  excuses  for  frightfulness.  This 
letter  is  one  that  did  not  get  back  to  Berlin,  later 
to  appear  in  a  White  Paper,  as  justification  for 
official  murder  of  noncombatants. 

The  picture  projected  by  the  Great  German  Lit- 
erary Staff  is  too  imaginative.  Think  of  that 
Army  of  the  Invasion  with  its  army  corps  rid- 
ing down  through  village  streets — the  Uhlan  cav- 
alry, the  innumerable  artillery,  the  dense  end- 
less infantry,  the  deadly  power  and  swing  of  it 
all — and  then  see  the  girl-child  of  Alost,  and  the 
white-haired  woman,  eighty  years  old — aiming 
their  rifles  at  that  cavalcade.  It  is  a  literary  crea- 
tion, not  a  statement  of  fact.  I  have  been  in 

57 


GOLDEN  LADS 

villages  when  German  troops  were  entering,  had 
entered,  and  were  about  to  enter.  I  saw  helpless, 
terror-stricken  women  huddled  against  the  wall, 
children  hiding  in  their  skirts,  old  men  dazed  and 
vague. 

Then,  as  the  blue-gray  uniforms  appeared  at  the 
head  of  the  street,  with  sunlight  on  the  pikes  and 
helmets,  came  the  cry — half  a  sob,  "Les  Alle- 
mands." 

The  German,  fabrications  are  unworthy.  Let 
the  little  slain  children,  and  the  violated  women, 
sleep  in  honor.  Your  race  was  stern  enough  in 
doing  them  to  death.  Let  them  alone,  now  that 
you  have  cleared  them  from  your  path  to  Paris. 

Doctor  George  Sarton,  of  the  University  of 
Ghent  writes  me : 

"During  the  last  months,  the  Germans  have 
launched  new  slanders  against  Belgium.  Their 
present  tactics  are  more  discreet  and  seem  to  be 
successful.  Many  'neutral'  travelers — especially 
Americans  and  Swiss — have  been  to  Belgium  to 
see  the  battlefields  or,  perhaps,  to  get  an  idea  of 
what  such  an  occupation  by  foreign  soldiers  ex- 
actly amounts  to.  Of  course,  these  men  can  see 

58 


THE  STEAM  ROLLER 

nothing  without  the  assistance  of  the  German 
authorities,  and  they  can  but  see  what  is  shown  to 
them.  The  greater  their  curiosity,  the  more  cour- 
tesy extended  to  them,  the  more  also  they  feel  in- 
debted to  their  German  hosts.  These  are  well 
aware  of  it:  the  sightseers  are  taken  in  their  net, 
and  with  a  very  few  exceptions,  their  critical  sense 
is  quickly  obliterated.  We  have  recently  been 
shown  one  of  the  finest  specimens  of  these  Ameri- 
can tourists:  Mr.  George  B.  McCellan,  professor 
of  History  at  Princeton,  who  made  himself  ridicu- 
lous by  writing  a  most  superficial  and  inaccurate 
article  for  the  "Sunday  Times  Magazine." 

"When  the  good  folks  of  Belgium  recollect  the 
spying  business  that  was  carried  on  at  their  ex- 
pense by  their  German  'friends,'  they  are  not 
likely  to  trust  much  their  German  enemies.  They 
know  that  the  Germans  are  quite  incapable  of 
keeping  to  themselves  any  fact  that  they  may  learn 
— in  whatever  confidential  and  intimate  circum- 
stances— if  this  fact  is  of  the  smallest  use  to  their 
own  country.  As  it  is  perfectly  impossible  to 
trust  them,  the  best  is  to  avoid  them,  and  that  is 
what  most  Belgians  are  doing. 

59 


GOLDEN  LADS 

"American  tourists  seeing  Belgium  through 
German  courtesy  are  considered  by  the  Belgians 
just  as  untrustworthy  as  the  Germans  themselves. 
This  is  the  right  attitude,  as  there  is  no  possi- 
bility left  to  the  Belgians  (in  Belgium)  of  test- 
ing the  morality  and  the  neutrality  of  their  visi- 
tors. The  result  of  which  is  that  these  visitors  are 
entirely  given  up  to  their  German  advisers;  all 
their  knowledge  is  of  German  origin.  Of  course, 
the  Germans  take  advantage  of  this  situation  and 
make  a  show  of  German  efficiency  and  organiza- 
tion.— 'Don't  you  know:  the  Germans  have  done 
so  much  for  Belgium!  Why,  everybody  knows 
that  this  country  was  very  inefficient,  very  badly 
managed  ...  a  poor  little  country  without  in- 
fluence. .  .  .  See  what  the  Germans  have  made 
of  it.  ...  There  was  no  compulsory  education, 
and  the  number  of  illiterates  was  scandalously 
high.'  (I  am  sorry  to  say  that  this  at  least  is 
true.)  'They  are  introducing  compulsory  and 
free  education.  In  the  big  towns,  sexual  moral- 
ity was  rather  loose,  but  the  Germans  are  now 
regulating  all  that.'  (You  should  hear  German 
officers  speak  of  prostitution  in  Antwerp  and 

60 


THE  STEAM  ROLLER 

Brussels.)  'The  evil  was  great,  but  fortunately 
the  Germans  came  and  are  cleaning  up  the  coun- 
try.'—  That  is  their  way  of  doing  and  talking. 
It  does  not  take  them  long  to  convince  ingenuous 
and  uncritical  Americans  that  everything  is  splen- 
didly regulated  by  German  efficiency,  and  that  if 
only  the  Belgians  were  complying,  everything 
would  be  all  right  in  Belgium.  Are  not  the  Bel- 
gians very  ungrateful? 

"The  Belgians  do  appreciate  American  gener- 
osity; they  realize  that  almost  the  only  rays  of 
happiness  that  reach  their  country  come  from 
America.  They  will  never  forget  it;  that  disin- 
terested help  coming  from  over  the  seas  has  a 
touch  of  romance;  it  is  great  and  comforting;  it 
is  the  bright  and  hopeful  side  of  the  war.  The 
Belgians  know  how  to  value  this.  But,  as  to 
what  the  Germans  are  doing,  good  or  not,  they 
will  never  appreciate  that — what  does  it  matter? 
The  Belgians  do  not  care  one  bit  for  German  re- 
forms; they  do  not  even  deign  to  consider  them; 
they  simply  ignore  them.  There  is  one — only 
one — reform  that  they  will  appreciate;  the  Ger- 
man evacuation.  All  the  rest  does  not  count. 

61 


GOLDEN  LADS 

When  the  Germans  speak  of  cleaning  the  country, 
the  Belgians  do  not  understand.  From  their 
point  of  view,  there  is  only  one  way  to  clean  it — 
and  that  is  for  the  Germans  to  clear  out. 

"The  Germans  are  very  disappointed  that  a 
certain  number  of  Belgians  have  been  able  to  es- 
cape, either  to  enlist  in  the  Belgian  army  or  to 
live  abroad.  Of  course,  the  more  Belgians  are  in 
their  hands,  the  more  pressure  they  can  exert. 
They  are  now  slandering  the  Belgians  who  have 
left  their  country — all  the  'rich'  people  who  are 
'feasting'  abroad  while  their  countrymen  are  starv- 
ing. 

"The  fewer  Belgians  there  are  in  German  hands, 
the  better  it  is.  The  Belgians  whose  ability  is  the 
most  useful,  are  considered  useful  by  the  Ger- 
mans for  the  latter's  sake.  Must  it  not  be  a  ter- 
rible source  of  anxiety  for  these  Belgians  to  think 
that  all  the  work  they  manage  to  do  is  directly 
or  indirectly  done  for  Germany1?  It  is  not  aston- 
ishing that  she  wants  to  restore  'business,  as  usual' 
in  Belgium,  and  that  in  many  cases  she  has  tried 
to  force  the  Belgian  workers  to  earn  for  her.  Let 

62 


THE  STEAM  ROLLER 

me  simply  refer  to  the  protest  recently  published 
by  the  Belgian  Legation.  But  for  the  American 
Commission  for  Relief,  the  Belgians  would  have 
had  to  choose  between  starvation  and  work — work 
for  Germany — starvation  or  treason.  Nothing 
shows  better  the  greatness  and  moment  of  the 
American  work.  Without  the  material  and  moral 
presence  of  the  United  States,  Belgium  would 
have  simply  been  turned  into  a  nation  of  slaves — 
starvation  or  treason. 

"If  I  were  in  Belgium,  I  could  say  nothing;  I 
would  have  to  choose  between  silence  and  prison, 
or  silence  and  death.  Remember  Edith  Cavell. 
An  enthusiastic,  courageous  man  is  running  as 
many  risks  in  Belgium  now,  as  he  would  have  in 
the  sixteenth  century  under  the  Spanish  domina- 
tion. The  hundred  eyes  of  the  Spanish  Inquisi- 
tion were  then  continually  prying  into  everything 
— bodies  and  souls;  one  felt  them  even  while  one 
was  sleeping.  The  German  Secret  Service  is  not 
less  pitiless  and  it  is  more  efficient. 

"The  process  of  slander  and  lie  carried  on  by 
the  Germans  to  'flatten'  Belgium  is,  to  my  judg- 

63 


GOLDEN  LADS 

ment,  the  worst  of  their  war  practices.  It  is  very 
efficient  indeed.  But,  however  efficient  it  may  be, 
it  will  be  unsuccessful  as  to  its  main  purpose. 
The  Germans  will  not  be  able  to  bow  Belgian 
heads.  As  long  as  the  Belgians  do  not  admit  that 
they  have  been  conquered,  they  are  not  conquered, 
and  in  the  meanwhile  the  Germans  are  merely  ag- 
gravating their  infamy.  It  was  an  easy  thing  to 
over-run  the  unprepared  Belgian  soil — but  the 
Belgian  spirit  is  unconquerable. 

"Belgium  may  slumber,  but  die — never." 
When  men  act  as  part  of  an  implacable  ma- 
chine, they  act  apart  from  their  humanity.  They 
commit  unbelievable  horrors,  because  the  thing 
that  moves  them  is  raw  force,  untouched  by  fine 
purpose  and  the  elements  of  mercy.  When  I 
think  of  Germans,  man  by  man,  as  they  lay 
wounded,  waiting  for  us  to  bring  them  in  and  care 
for  them  as  faithfully  as  for  our  own,  I  know  that 
they  have  become  human  in  their  defeat.  We  are 
their  friends  as  we  break  them.  In  spite  of  their 
treachery  and  cruelty  and  cold  hatred,  we  shall 
save  them  yet.  Cleared  of  their  evil  dream  and 
restored  to  our  common  humanity,  they  will  have 


THE  STEAM  ROLLER 

a  more  profound  sorrow  growing  out  of  this  war 
than  any  other  people,  for  Belgium  and  France 
only  suffered  these  things,  but  the  great  German 
race  committed  them. 


MY  EXPERIENCE  WITH  BAEDEKER 


w 


HEN  I  went  to  Belgium,  friends  said  to  me, 
"You  must  take  'Baedeker's  Belgium'  with 
you;  it  is  the  best  thing  on  the  country."  So  I 
did.  I  used  it  as  I  went  around.  The  author 
does  n't  give  much  about  himself,  and  that  is 
a  good  feature  in  any  book,  but  I  gathered  he 
was  a  German,  a  widely  traveled  man,  and  he 
seems  to  have  spent  much  time  in  Belgium,  for 
I  found  intimate  records  of  the  smallest  things. 
I  used  his  guide  for  five  months  over  there.  I 
must  say  right  here  I  was  disappointed  in  it. 
And  that  is  n't  just  the  word,  either.  I  was  an- 
noyed by  it.  It  gave  all  the  effect  of  accuracy, 
and  then  when  I  got  there  it  was  n't  so.  He  kept 
speaking  of  buildings  as  "beautiful,"  "one  of  the 
loveliest  unspoiled  pieces  of  thirteenth  century 
architecture  in  Europe,"  and  when  I  took  a  lot 
of  trouble  and  visited  the  building,  I  found  it 
half  down,  or  a  butt-end,  or  sometimes  ashes.  I 

66 


MY  EXPERIENCE  WITH  BAEDEKER 

could  n't  make  his  book  tally  up.  It  does  n't 
agree  with  the  landscape  and  the  look  of  things. 
He  will  take  a  perfectly  good  detail  and  stick  it  in 
where  it  does  n't  belong,  and  leave  it  there.  And 
he  does  it  all  in  a  painstaking  way  and  with  evi- 
dent sincerity. 

His  volume  had  been  so  popular  back  in  his  own 
country  that  it  had  brought  a  lot  of  Germans  into 
Belgium.  I  saw  them  everywhere.  They  were 
doing  the  same  thing  I  was  doing,  checking  up 
what  they  saw  with  the  map  and  text  and  things. 
Some  of  them  looked  puzzled  and  angry,  as  they 
went  around.  I  feel  sure  they  will  go  home  and 
give  Baedeker  a  warm  time,  when  they  tell  him 
they  did  n't  find  things  as  he  had  represented. 

For  one  thing,  he  makes  out  Belgium  a  lively 
country,  full  of  busy,  contented  people,  innocent 
peasants,  and  sturdy  workmen  and  that  sort  of 
thing.  Why,  it  3s  the  saddest  place  in  the  world. 
The  people  are  not  cheery  at  all.  They  are  de- 
pressed. It 's  the  last  place  I  should  think  of  for 
a  holiday,  now  that  I  have  seen  it.  And  that 's 
the  way  it  goes,  all  through  his  work.  Things 
are  the  opposite  of  what  he  says  with  so  much 

67 


GOLDEN  LADS 

meticulous  care.  He  would  speak  of  "gay  cafe 
life"  in  a  place  that  looked  as  if  an  earthquake  had 
hit  it,  and  where  the  only  people  were  some 
cripples  and  a  few  half-starved  old  folks.  If  he 
finds  that  sort  of  thing  gay  as  he  travels  around, 
he  is  an  easy  man  to  please.  It  was  so  wherever 
I  went.  It  is  n't  as  if  he  were  wrong  at  some  one 
detail.  He  is  wrong  all  over  the  place,  all  over 
Belgium.  It 's  all  different  from  the  way  he  says 
it  is.  I  know  his  fellow-countrymen  who  are 
there  now  will  bear  me  out  in  this. 

Let  me  show  one  place.  I  took  his  book  with 
me  and  used  it  on  Nieuport.  That 's  a  perfectly 
fair  test,  because  Nieuport  is  like  a  couple  of  hun- 
dred other  towns. 

"Nieuport,"  says  Herr  Baedeker,  "  a  small  and 
quiet  place  on  the  Yser." 

It  is  one  of  the  noisiest  places  I  have  ever  been 
in.  There  was  a  day  and  a  half  in  May  when 
shells  dropped  into  the  streets  and  houses,  every 
minute.  Every  day  at  least  a  few  screaming 
three-inch  shells  fall  on  the  village.  Aeroplanes 
buzz  overhead,  shrapnel  pings  in  the  sky.  Rifle 
bullets  sing  like  excited  telegraph  wires.  If 

68 


Baedeker,  the  distinguished  German  writer,  states  that  this 
Fifteenth  Century  Gothic  church  in  Nieuport  has  "a  modern 
timber  roof."  We  looked  for  it. 


MY  EXPERIENCE  WITH  BAEDEKER 

Baedeker  found  Nieuport  a  quiet  place,  he  was 
brought  up  in  a  boiler  factory. 

His  very  next  phrase  puzzled  me — "with  3500 
inhabitants,"  he  says. 

And  I  did  n't  see  one.  There  were  dead  people 
in  the  ruins  of  the  houses.  The  soldiers  used  to 
unearth  them  from  time  to  time.  I  remember 
that  the  poet  speaks  of  "the  poor  inhabitant  be- 
low," when  he  is  writing  of  a  body  in  a  grave.  It 
must  be  in  that  sense  that  Baedeker  specifies  those 
3500  inhabitants.  But  he  should  n't  do  that  kind 
of  imaginative  touch.  It  is  n't  in  his  line.  And 
it  might  mislead  people. 

Think  of  a  stranger  getting  into  Nieuport  after 
dark  on  a  wet  night,  with  his  mind  all  set  on  the 
three  hotels  Baedeker  gives  him  a  choice  of. 

"All  unpretending,"  he  says. 

Just  the  wrong  word.  Why,  those  hotels  are 
brick  dust.  They  're  flat  on  the  ground.  There 
is  n't  a  room  left.  He  means  "demolished."  He 
does  n't  use  our  language  easily.  I  can  see  that. 
It  is  true  they  are  unpretending,  but  that  is  n't 
the  first  word  you  would  use  about  them,  not  if 
you  were  fluent. 

71 


GOLDEN  LADS 

Then  he  gives  a  detail  that  is  unnecessary.  He 
says  you  can  sleep  or  eat  there  for  a  "franc  and  a 
half."  That  exactitude  is  out  of  place.  It  is 
labored.  I  ask  you  what  a  traveler  would  make 
of  the  "\]/2  fr.  pour  diner"  when  he  came  on 
that  rubbish  heap  which  is  the  Hotel  of  Hope— 
"Hotel  de  1'Esperance."  That  is  like  Baedeker, 
all  through  his  volume.  He  will  give  a  detail, 
like  the  precise  cost  of  this  dinner,  when  there  is  n't 
any  food  in  the  neighborhood.  It  would  n't  be  so 
bad  if  he  'd  sketch  things  in  general  terms.  That 
I  could  forgive.  But  it  is  too  much  when  he 
makes  a  word-picture  of  a  Flemish  table  d'hote  for 
a  franc  and  a  half  in  a  section  of  country  where 
even  the  cats  are  starving. 

His  next  statement  is  plain  twisted.  "Nieu- 
port  is  noted  for  its  obstinate  resistance  to  the 
French." 

I  saw  French  soldiers  there  every  day.  They 
were  defending  the  place.  His  way  of  putting  it 
stands  the  facts  on  their  head. 

"And  (is  noted)  for  the  'Battle  of  the  Dunes' 
in  1600." 

That  is  where  the  printer  falls  down.     I  was 
72 


MY  EXPERIENCE  WITH  BAEDEKER 

there  during  the  Battle  of  the  Dunes.  The  nine 
is  upside  down  in  the  date  as  given. 

I  would  n't  object  so  much  if  he  were  careless 
with  facts  that  were  harmless,  like  his  hotels  and 
his  dinner  and  his  dates.  But  when  he  gives  bad 
advice  that  would  lead  people  into  trouble, 
I  think  he  ought  to  be  jacked  up.  Listen  to 
this: 

"We  may  turn  to  the  left  to  inspect  the  locks 
on  the  canals  to  Ostend." 

Baedeker's  proposal  here  means  sure  death  to 
the  reader  who  tries  it.  That  section  is  lined  with 
machine  guns.  If  a  man  began  turning  and  in- 
specting, he  would  be  shot.  Baedeker's,  statement 
is  too  casual.  It  sounds  like  a  suggestion  for  a 
leisurely  walk.  It  is  n't  a  sufficient  warning 
against  doing  something  which  shortens  life.  The 
word  "inspect"  is  unfortunate.  It  gives  the 
reader  the  idea  he  is  invited  to  nose  around  those 
locks,  when  he  had  really  better  quiet  down  and 
keep  away.  The  sentries  don't  want  him  there. 
I  should  have  written  that  sentence  differently. 
His  kind  of  unconsidered  advice  leads  to  a  lot  of 
sadness. 

73 


GOLDEN  LADS 

"The  Rue  Longue  contains  a  few  quaint  old 
houses." 

It  does  n't  contain  any  houses  at  all.  There 
are  some  heaps  of  scorched  rubble.  "Quaint" 
is  word  painting. 

"On  the  south  side  of  this  square  rises  the  dig- 
nified Cloth  Hall." 

There  is  nothing  dignified  about  a  shattered, 
burned,  tottering  old  building.  Why  will  he  use 
these  literary  words'? 

"With  a  lately  restored  belfry." 

It  seems  as  if  this  writer  could  n't  help  saying 
the  wrong  thing.  A  Zouave  gave  us  a  piece  of 
bronze  from  the  big  bell.  It  was  n't  restored  at 
all.  It  was  on  the  ground,  broken. 

"The  church  has  a  modern  timber  roof." 

There  he  goes  again — the  exact  opposite  of 
what  even  a  child  could  see  were  the  facts.  And 
yet  in  his  methodical,  earnest  way,  he  has  tried 
to  get  these  things  right.  That  church,  for  in- 
stance, has  no  roof  at  all.  It  has  a  few  pillars 
standing.  It  looks  like  a  skeleton.  I  have  a 
good  photograph  of  it,  which  the  reader  can 
see  on  page  69.  If  Baedeker  would  stand  under 

74 


MY  EXPERIENCE  WITH  BAEDEKER 

that  "modern  timber  roof"  in  a  rainstorm,  he 
would  n't  think  so  much  of  it. 

"The  Hotel  de  Ville  contains  a  small  collection 
of  paintings." 

I  don't  like  to  keep  picking  on  what  he  says,  but 
this  sentence  is  irritating.  There  are  n't  any 
paintings  there,  because  things  are  scattered.  You 
can  see  torn  bits  strewed  around  on  the  floor  of  the 
place,  but  nothing  like  a  collection. 

I  could  go  on  like  that,  and  take  him  up  on  a 
lot  more  details.  But  it  sounds  as  if  I  were  criti- 
cising. And  I  don't  mean  it  that  way,  because  I 
believe  the  man  is  doing  his  best.  But  I  do  think 
he  ought  to  get  out  another  edition  of  his  book, 
and  set  these  points  straight. 

He  puts  a  little  poem  on  his  title  page : 

Go,  little  book,  God  send  thee  good  passage, 
And  specially  let  this  be  thy  prayer 
Unto  them  all  that  thee  will  read  or  hear, 
Where  thou  art  wrong,  after  their  help  to  call, 
Thee  to  correct  in  any  part  or  all. 

That  sounds  fair  enough.  So  I  am  going  to 
send  him  these  notes.  But  it  is  n't  in  "parts"  he 
is  "wrong."  There  is  a  big  mistake  somewhere. 

75 


GOLDEN  LADS 

"Golden  lads  and  girls  all  must, 
As  chimney-sweepers,  come  to  dust. 


77 


THE  PLAY-BOYS  OF  BRITTANY 

LES    FUSILIERS    MARINS 

AT  times  in  my  five  months  at  the  front  I  have 
been  puzzled  by  the  sacrifice  of  so  much 
young  life;  and  most  I  have  wondered  about  the 
Belgians.  I  had  seen  their  first  army  wiped  out; 
there  came  a  time  when  I  no  longer  met  the  faces 
I  had  learned  to  know  at  Termonde  and  Antwerp 
and  Alost.  A  new  army  of  boys  has  dug  itself  in 
at  the  Yser,  and  the  same  wastage  by  gun-fire  and 
disease  is  at  work  on  them.  One  wonders  with  the 
Belgians  if  the  price  they  pay  for  honor  is  not  too 
high.  There  is  a  sadness  in  the  eyes  of  Belgian 
boy  soldiers  that  is  not  easy  to  face.  Are  we  quite 
worthy  of  their  sacrifice?  Why  should  the  son 
of  Ysaye  die  for  me1?  Are  you,  comfortable 
reader,  altogether  sure  that  Pierre  Depage  and 
Andre  Simont  are  called  on  to  spill  their  blood  for 
your  good  name? 

79 


Then  one  turns  with  relief  to  the  Fusiliers  Mar- 
ins — the  sailors  with  a  rifle.  Here  are  young  men 
at  play.  They  know  they  are  the  incomparable 
soldiers.  The  guns  have  been  on  them  for  fifteen 
months,  but  they  remain  unbroken.  Twice  in  the 
year,  if  they  had  yielded,  this  might  have  been  a 
short  war.  But  that  is  only  saying  that  if  Brit- 
tany had  a  different  breed  of  men  the  world  and 
its  future  would  contain  less  hope.  They  carry 
the  fine  liquor  of  France,  and  something  of  their 
own  added  for  bouquet.  They  are  happy  soldiers 
— happy  in  their  brief  life,  with  its  flash  of  dar- 
ing, and  happy  in  their  death.  It  is  still  sweet  to 
die  for  one's  country,  and  that  at  no  far-flung  out- 
post over  the  seas  and  sands,  but  just  at  the  home 
border.  As  we  carried  our  wounded  sailors  down 
from  Nieuport  to  the  great  hospital  of  Zuydcoote 
on  the  Dunkirk  highway,  there  is  a  sign-board,  a 
bridge,  and  a  custom-house  that  mark  the  point 
where  we  pass  from  Belgium  into  France.  We 
drove  our  ambulance  with  the  rear  curtain  raised, 
so  that  the  wounded  men,  lying  on  the  stretchers, 
could  be  cheered  by  the  flow  of  scenery.  Some- 
times, as  we  crossed  that  border-line,  one  of  the 

80 


THE  PLAY-BOYS  OF  BRITTANY 

men  would  pick  it  up  with  his  eye,  and  would  say 
to  his  comrade:  "France!  Now  we  are  in 
France,  the  beautiful  country." 

"What  do  you  mean*?"  I  asked  one  lad,  who  had 
brightened  visibly. 

"The  other  countries,"  he  said,  "are  flat  and 
dirty.  The  people  are  of  mixed  races.  France  is 
not  so." 

It  has  been  my  fortune  to  watch  the  sailors  at 
work  from  the  start  of  the  war.  I  was  in  Ghent 
when  they  came  there,  late,  to  a  hopeless  situation. 
Here  were  youngsters  scooped  up  from  the  decks, 
untrained  in  trenches,  and  rushed  to  the  front ;  but 
the  sea-daring  was  on  them,  and  they  knew  obedi- 
ence and  the  hazards.  They  helped  to  cover  the 
retreat  of  the  Belgians  and  save  that  army  from 
annihilation  by  banging  away  at  the  German  mass 
at  Melle.  Man  after  man  developed  a  fatalism 
of  war,  and  expressed  it  to  us. 

"Nothing  can  hit  you  till  your  time,"  was  often 
their  way  of  saying  it;  "it 's  no  use  dodging  or  be- 
ing afraid.  You  won't  be  hit  till  your  shell 
comes."  And  another  favorite  belief  of  theirs 
that  brought  them  cheer  was  this:  "The  shell 

8l 


GOLDEN  LADS 

that  will  kill  you  you  won't  hear  coming.     So 
you  '11  never  know." 

These  sailor  lads  thrive  on  lost  causes,  and 
it  was  at  Ghent  they  won  from  the  Germans  their 
nickname  of  "Les  demoiselles  au  pompon  rouge." 
The  saucy  French  of  that  has  a  touch  beyond  any 
English  rendering  of  "the  girls  with  the  red  pom- 
pon." "Les  demoiselles  au  pompon  rouge"  paints 
their  picture  at  one  stroke,  for  they  thrust  out  the 
face  of  a  youngster  from  under  a  rakish  blue  sailor 
hat,  crowned  with  a  fluffy  red  button,  like  a  blue 
flower  with  a  red  bloom  at  its  heart.  I  rarely  saw 
an  aging  marin.  There  are  no  seasoned  troops  so 
boyish.  They  wear  open  dickies,  which  expose 
the  neck,  full,  hard,  well-rounded.  The  older 
troops,  who  go  laggard  to  the  spading,  have  beards 
that  extend  down  the  collar;  but  a  boy  has  a 
smooth,  clean  neck,  and  these  sailors  have  the 
throat  of  youth.  We  must  once  have  had  such  a 
race  in  our  cow-boys  and  Texas  rangers — level- 
eyed,  careless  men  who  know  no  masters,  only 
equals.  The  force  of  gravity  is  heavy  on  an  old 
man.  But  marins  are  not  weighted  down  by 
equipment  nor  muffled  with  clothing.  They  go 

82 


THE  PLAY-BOYS  OF  BRITTANY 

bobbing  like  corks,  as  though  they  would  always 
stay  on  the  crest  of  things.  And  riding  on  top  of 
their  lightness  is  that  absurd  bright-red  button  in 
their  cap.  The  armies  for  five  hundred  miles  are 
sober,  grown-up  people,  but  here  are  the  play-boys 
of  the  western  front. 

From  Ghent  they  trooped  south  to  Dixmude, 
and  were  shot  to  pieces  in  that  "Thermopylae  of 
the  North." 

"Hold  for  four  days,"  was  their  order. 

They  held  for  three  weeks,  till  the  sea  came 
down  and  took  charge.  During  those  three  weeks 
we  motored  in  and  out  to  get  their  wounded. 
Nothing  of  orderly  impression  of  those  days  re- 
mains to  me.  I  have  only  flashes  of  the  sailor- 
soldiers  curved  over  and  snaking  along  the  bat- 
tered streets  behind  slivers  of  wall,  handfuls  of 
them  in  the  Hotel  de  Ville  standing  around  wait- 
ing in  a  roar  of  noise  and  a  bright  blaze  of  burn- 
ing houses — waiting  till  the  shelling  fades  away.1 

1If  any  one  wants  a  history  of  them,  and  the  world  ought 
to  want  it,  the  book  of  their  acts,  is  it  not  written  in  singing 
prose  in  Le  Goffic's  "Dixmude,  un  Chapitre  de  Phistoire  des 
Fusiliers  Marins"?  Le  Goffic  is  a  Breton  and  his  own  son 
is  with  the  fighting  sailors.  He  deals  with  their  autumn  ex- 

83 


GOLDEN  LADS 

Then  for  over  twelve  months  they  held  wrecked 
Nieuport,  and  I  have  watched  them  there  week 
after  week.  There  is  no  drearier  post  on  earth. 
One  day  in  the  pile  of  masonry  thirty  feet  from 
our  cellar  refuge  the  sailors  began  throwing  out 
the  bricks,  and  in  a  few  minutes  they  uncov- 
ered the  body  of  a  comrade.  All  the  village  has 
the  smell  of  desolation.  That  smell  is  com- 
pounded of  green  ditch-water,  damp  plaster,  wet 
clothing,  blood,  straw,  and  antiseptics.  The  nose 
took  it  as  we  crossed  the  canal,  and  held  it  till 
we  shook  ourselves  on  the  run  home.  Thirty 
minutes  a  day  in  that  soggy  wreck  pulled  at  my 
spirits  for  hours  afterward.  But  those  chaps 
stood  up  to  it  for  twenty-four  hours  a  day,  lifting 

ploits  in  Dixmude  on  the  Yser,  that  butt-end  of  wreck.  Legends 
will  spring  out  of  them  and  the  soil  they  have  reddened.  We 
have  heard  little  of  the  French  in  this  war — and  almost  nothing 
at  all  from  them.  And  yet  it  is  the  French  that  have  held  the 
decisive  battle  line.  Unprepared  and  peace-loving,  they  have 
stood  the  shock  of  a  perfectly  equipped  and  war-loving  army. 

Monsieur  Le  Goffic  is  the  official  historian  of  the  Fusiliers 
Marins.  His  book  has  gone  through  forty-nine  editions.  He  is 
a  poet,  novelist  and  critic.  That  American  sympathy  is  ap- 
preciated is  proved  by  this  sentence  from  a  letter  of  Le  Goffic 
to  an  American  who  had  expressed  admiration  for  the  Breton 
sailors: —  "Merci,  Monsieur,  au  nom  de  mon  pays,  merci  pour 
nos  marins,  et  merci  pour  moi  meme." 

84 


THE  PLAY-BOYS  OF  BRITTANY 

a  cheery  face  from  a  stinking  cellar,  hopping  about 
in  the  tangle,  sleeping  quietly  when  their  "night 
off"  comes.  As  our  chauffeur  drew  his  camera, 
one  of  them  sprang  into  a  bush  entanglement, 
aimed  his  rifle,  and  posed. 

I  recollect  an  afternoon  when  we  had  word  of 
an  attack.  We  were  grave,  because  the  Germans 
are  strong  and  fearless. 

"Are  they  coming?"  grinned  a  sailor.  "Let 
them  come.  We  are  ready." 

We  learned  to  know  many  of  the  Fusiliers 
Marins  and  to  grow  fond  of  them.  How  else 
could  it  be  when  we  went  and  got  them,  sick  and 
wounded,  dying  and  dead,  two,  six,  ten  of  them 
a  day,  for  many  weeks,  and  brought  them  in  to 
the  Red  Cross  post  for  a  dressing,  and  then  on 
to  the  hospital*?  I  remember  a  young  man  in 
our  ambulance.  His  right  foot  was  shot  away, 
and  the  leg  above  was  wounded.  He  lay  un- 
murmuring for  all  the  tossing  of  the  road  over  the 
long  miles  of  the  ride.  We  lifted  him  from  the 
stretcher,  which  he  had  wet  with  his  blood,  into 
the  white  cot  in  "Hall  15"  of  Zuydcoote  Hospital. 
The  wound  and  the  journey  had  gone  deeply  into 

85 


GOLDEN  LADS 

his  vitality.  As  he  touched  the  bed,  his  control 
ebbed,  and  he  became  violently  sick  at  the  stomach. 
I  stooped  to  carry  back  the  empty  stretcher.  He 
saw  I  was  going  away,  and  said,  "Thank  you."  I 
knew  I  should  not  see  him  again,  not  even  if  I 
came  early  next  day. 

There  is  one  unfading  impression  made  on  me 
by  those  wounded.  If  I  call  it  good  nature,  I 
have  given  only  one  element  in  it.  It  is  more 
than  that:  it  is  a  dash  of  fun.  They  smile,  they 
wink,  they  accept  a  light  for  their  cigarette.  It 
is  not  stoicism  at  all.  Stoicism  is  a  grim  holding 
on,  the  jaws  clenched,  the  spirit  dark,  but  endur- 
ing. This  is  a  thing  of  wings.  They  will  know 
I  am  not  making  light  of  their  pain  in  writing 
these  words.  I  am  only  saying  that  they  make 
light  of  it.  The  judgment  of  men  who  are  soon  to 
die  is  like  the  judgment  of  little  children.  It  does 
not  tolerate  foolish  words.  Of  all  the  ways  of 
showing  you  care  that  they  suffer  there  is  nothing 
half  so  good  as  the  gift  of  tobacco.  As  long  as  I 
had  any  money  to  spend,  I  spent  it  on  packages 
of  cigarettes. 

When  the  Marin  officers  found  out  we  were  the 
86 


THE  PLAY-BOYS  OF  BRITTANY 

same  people  that  had  worked  with  them  at  Melle 
five  months  before,  they  invited  my  wife  and  three 
other  nurses  to  luncheon  in  a  Nieuport  cellar. 
Their  eye  brightens  at  sight  of  a  woman,  but  she 
is  as  safe  with  them  as  with  a  cowboy  or  a  Quaker. 
The  guests  were  led  down  into  a  basement,  an 
eighteen  foot  room,  six  feet  high.  The  sailors 
had  covered  the  floor  and  papered  the  walls  with 
red  carpet.  A  tiny  oil  stove  added  to  the  warmth 
of  that  blazing  carpet.  More  than  twenty  officers 
and  doctors  crowded  into  the  room,  and  took  seats 
at  the  table,  lighted  by  two  lamps.  There  were 
a  dozen  plates  of  patisserie,  a  choice  of  tea,  coffee, 
or  chocolate,  all  hot,  white  and  red  wine,  and  then 
champagne.  An  orderly  lifted  in  a  little  wooden 
yacht,  bark-rigged,  fourteen  inches  long,  with 
white  painted  sails.  A  nurse  spilled  champagne 
over  the  tiny  ship,  till  it  was  drenched,  and 
.christened.  The  chief  doctor  made  a  speech  of 
thanks.  Then  the  ship  went  around  the  table, 
and  each  guest  wrote  her  name  on  the  sails.  The 
party  climbed  out  into  the  garden,  where  the  shells 
were  going  high  overhead  like  snowballs.  In 
amongst  the  blackened  flowers,  a  1 6-inch  shell  had 

89 


GOLDEN  LADS 

left  a  hole  of  fifty  feet  diameter.     One  could  have 
dropped  two  motor  cars  into  the  cavity. 

Who  but  Marins  would  have  devised  a  celebra- 
tion for  us  on  July  4*?  The  commandant,  the 
captain,  and  a  brace  of  lieutenants  opened  eleven 
bottles  of  champagne  in  the  Cafe  du  Sport  at 
Coxyde  in  honor  of  our  violation  of  neutrality. 
It  was  little  enough  we  were  doing  for  those  men, 
but  they  were  moved  to  graceful  speech.  We 
were  hard  put  to  it,  because  one  had  to  tell  them 
that  much  of  the  giving  for  a  hundred  years  had 
been  from  France  to  us,  and  our  showing  in  this 
war  is  hardly  the  equal  of  the  aid  they  sent  us 
when  we  were  invaded  by  Hessian  troops  and  a 
German  king. 

Marins  whom  we  know  have  the  swift  grati- 
tude of  simple  natures,  not  too  highly  civilized  to 
show  when  they  are  pleased.  After  we  had  sent 
a  batch  of  their  wounded  by  hospital  train  from 
Adinkerke,  the  two  sailors,  who  had  helped  us,  in- 
vited my  American  friend  and  me  into  the  estami- 
net  across  the  road  from  the  station,  and  bought 
us  drinks  for  an  hour.  We  had  been  good  to  their 
mates,  so  they  wanted  to  be  good  to  us. 

90 


THE  PLAY-BOYS  OF  BRITTANY 

When  we  lived  in  barraquement,  just  back  of 
the  admiral's  house,  our  cook  was  a  Marin  with  a 
knack  at  omelettes.  If  we  had  to  work  through 
the  night,  going  into  black  Nieuport,  and  down  the 
ten-mile  road  to  Zuydcoote,  returning  weary  at 
midnight,  a  brave  supper  was  laid  out  for  us  of 
canned  meats,  wines,  and  jellies — all  set  with  the 
touch  of  one  who  cared.  It  was  no  hasty,  slapped- 
down  affair.  We  were  carrying  his  comrades,  and 
he  was  helping  us  to  do  it. 

It  was  an  officer  of  a  quite  other  regiment  who, 
one  time  when  we  were  off  duty,  asked  us  to  carry 
him  to  his  post  in  the  Dunes.  We  made  the  run 
for  him,  and,  as  he  jumped  from  the  car,  he  of- 
fered us  a  franc.  Marins  pay  back  in  friendship. 
The  Red  Cross  station  to  which  we  reported, 
Poste  de  Secours  des  Marins,  was  conducted  by 
Monsieur  le  Docteur  Rolland,  and  Monsieur  Le 
Doze.  Our  workers  were  standing  guests  at  their 
officers'  mess.  The  little  sawed-off  sailor  in  the 
Villa  Marie  where  I  was  billetted  made  coffee  for 
two  of  us  each  morning. 

Our  friends  have  the  faults  of  young  men, 
flushed  with  life.  They  are  scornful  of  feeble 

91 


GOLDEN  LADS 

folk,  of  men  who  grow  tired,  who  think  twice  be- 
fore dying.  They  laugh  at  middle  age.  The 
sentries  amuse  them,  the  elderly  chaps  who  duck 
into  their  caves  when  a  few  shells  are  sailing  over- 
head. They  have  no  charity  for  frail  nerves. 
They  hate  races  who  don't  rally  to  a  man  when 
the  enemy  is  hitting  the  trail.  They  must  wait 
for  age  to  gain  pity,  and  the  Bretons  will  never 
grow  old.  They  are  killed  too  fast.  And  yet, 
as  soon  as  I  say  that,  I  remember  their  rough  pity 
for  their  hurt  comrades.  They  are  as  busy  as  a 
hospital  nurse  in  laying  a  blanket  and  swinging 
the  stretcher  for  one  of  their  own  who  has  been 
"pinked."  They  have  a  hovering  concern.  I 
have  had  twenty  come  to  the  ambulance  to  help 
shove  in  a  "blesse,"  and  say  good-by  to  him,  and 
wave  to  him  as  long  as  the  road  left  him  in  their 
sight.  The  wounded  man,  unless  his  back  bound 
him  down,  would  lift  his  head  from  the  stretcher, 
to  give  back  their  greetings.  It  was  an  eager  ex- 
change between  the  whole  men  and  the  injured 
one.  They  don't  believe  they  can  be  broken  till 
the  thing  comes,  and  there  is  curiosity  to  see  just 
what  has  befallen  one  like  themselves. 

92 


THE  PLAY-BOYS  OF  BRITTANY 

When  it  came  my  time  to  say  good-by,  my 
sailor  friend,  who  had  often  stopped  by  my  car 
to  tell  me  that  all  was  going  well,  ran  over  to  share 
in  the  excitement.  I  told  him  I  was  leaving,  and 
he  gave  me  a  smile  of  deep-understanding  amuse- 
ment. Tired  so  soon?  That  smile  carried  a  live 
consciousness  of  untapped  power,  of  the  record  he 
and  his  comrades  had  made.  It  showed  a  disre- 
gard of  my  personal  feelings,  of  all  adult  human 
weakness.  That  was  the  picture  I  carried  away 
from  the  Nieuport  line — the  smiling  boy  with  his 
wounded  arm,  alert  after  his  year  of  war,  and 
more  than  a  little  scornful  of  one  who  had  grown 
weary  in  conditions  so  prosperous  for  young  men. 

I  rode  away  from  him,  past  the  Coxyde  en- 
campment of  his  comrades.  There  they  were  as  I 
had  often  seen  them,  with  the  peddlers  cluttering 
their  camp — candy  men,  banana  women ;  a  fringe 
of  basket  merchants  about  their  grim  barracks; 
a  dozen  peasants  squatting  with  baskets  of  ciga- 
rettes, fruit,  vegetables,  foolish,  bright  trinkets. 
And  over  them  bent  the  boys,  dozens  of  them 
in  blue  blouses,  stooping  down  to  pick  up  trays, 
fingering  red  apples  and  shining  charms,  chaffing, 

93 


GOLDEN  LADS 

dickering,  shoving  one  another,  the  old  loves  of 
their  childhood  still  tangled  in  their  being. 

So  when  I  am  talking  about  the  sailors  as  if 
they  were  heroes,  suddenly  something  gay  comes 
romping  in.  I  see  them  again,  as  I  have  so  often 
seen  them  in  the  dunes  of  Flanders,  and  what  I  see 
is  a  race  of  children. 

"Don't  forget  we  are  only  little  ones,"  they 
say.  "We  don't  die;  we  are  just  at  play." 


"ENCHANTED  CIGARETTES" 

WHERE  does  the  comfort  of  the  trenches  lie? 
What  solace  do  the  soldiers  find  for  a 
weary  life  of  unemployment  and  for  sudden 
death?  Of  course,  they  find  it  in  the  age-old 
things  that  have  always  sufficed,  or,  if  these  things 
do  not  here  altogether  suffice,  at  least  they  help. 
For  a  certain  few  out  of  every  hundred  men,  reli- 
gion avails.  Some  of  our  dying  men  were  glad  of 
the  last  rites.  Some  wore  their  Catholic  emblems. 
The  quiet  devout  men  continued  faithful  as  they 
had  been  at  home.  Art  is  playing  the  true  part 
it  plays  at  all  times  of  fundamental  need.  The 
men  busy  themselves  with  music,  with  carving, 
and  drawing.  Security  and  luxury  destroy  art, 
for  it  is  no  longer  a  necessity  when  a  man  is  stuffed 
with  foods,  and  his  fat  body  whirled  in  hot  com- 
partments from  point  to  point  of  a  tame  world. 
But  when  he  tumbles  in  from  a  gusty  night  out 
of  a  trenchful  of  mud,  with  the  patter  from  slivers 
of  shell,  then  he  turns  to  song  and  color,  odd  tricks 

95 


GOLDEN  LADS 

with  the  knife,  and  the  tales  of  an  ancient  adven- 
ture. After  our  group  had  brought  food  and 
clothing  to  a  regiment,  I  remember  the  pride  with 
which  one  of  the  privates  presented  to  our  head 
nurse  a  sculptured  group,  done  in  mud  of  the  Yser. 
But  the  greatest  thing  in  the  world  to  soldiers  is 
plain  comradeship.  That  is  where  they  take  their 
comfort.  And  the  expression  of  that  comrade- 
ship is  most  often  found  in  the  social  smoke.  The 
meager  happiness  of  fighting-men  is  more  closely 
interwoven  with  tobacco  than  with  any  other 
single  thing.  To  rob  them  of  that  would  be  to 
leave  them  poor  indeed.  It  would  reduce  their 
morale.  It  would  depress  their  cheery  patience. 
The  wonder  of  tobacco  is  that  it  fits  itself  to  each 
one  of  several  needs.  It  is  the  medium  by  which 
the  average  man  maintains  normality  at  an  abnor- 
mal time.  It  is  a  device  to  soothe  jumping  nerves, 
to  deaden  pain,  to  chase  away  brooding.  Tobacco 
connects  a  man  with  the  human  race,  and  his  own 
past  life.  It  gives  him  a  little  thing  to  do  in  a 
big  danger,  in  seeping  loneliness,  and  the  grip  of 
sharp  pain.  It  brings  back  his  cafe  evenings, 
when  black  horror  is  reaching  out  for  him. 

96 


"ENCHANTED  CIGARETTES" 

If  you  have  weathered  around  the  world  a  bit, 
you  know  how  everywhere  strange  situations  turn 
into  places  for  plain  men  to  feel  at  home.  Sailors 
on  a  Nova  Scotia  freight  schooner,  five  days  out, 
sit  around  in  the  evening  glow  and  take  a  pipe 
and  a  chat  with  the  same  homely  accustomedness, 
as  if  they  were  at  a  tavern.  It  is  so  in  the  jungle 
and  at  a  lumber  camp.  Now,  that  is  what  the 
millions  of  average  men  have  done  to  war.  They 
have  taken  a  raw,  disordered,  muddied,  horrible 
thing,  and  given  it  a  monotony  and  regularity  of 
its  own.  They  have  smoked  away  its  fighting 
tension,  its  hideous  expectancy.  They  refuse  to 
let  mangling  and  murder  put  crimps  in  their  spirit. 
Apparently  there  is  nothing  hellish  enough  to  flat- 
ten the  human  spirit.  Not  all  the  sprinkled  shells 
and  caravans  of  bleeding  victims  can  cow  the  boys 
of  the  front  line.  In  this  work  of  lifting  clear  of 
horror,  tobacco  has  been  a  friend  to  the  soldiers 
of  the  Great  War. 

"I  would  n't  know  a  good  cigarette  if  I  saw  it,'* 
said  Geoffrey  Gilling,  after  a  year  of  ambulance 
work  at  Fumes  and  Coxyde.  He  had  given  up 
all  that  makes  the  life  of  an  upper-class  English- 

97 


GOLDEN  LADS 

man  pleasant,  and  I  think  that  the  deprivation  of 
high-grade  smoking  material  was  a  severe  item  in 
his  sacrifice. 

Four  of  us  in  Red  Cross  work  spent  weary  hours 
each  day  in  a  filthy  room  in  a  noisy  wine-shop, 
waiting  for  fresh  trouble  to  break  loose.  The 

dreariness  of  it  made  B petulant  and  T 

mournfully  silent,  and  finally  left  me  melancholy. 
But  sturdy  Andrew  MacEwan,  the  Scotchman 
with  the  forty-inch  barrel  chest,  would  reach  out 
for  his  big  can  of  naval  tobacco,  slipped  to  him  by 
the  sailors  at  Dunkirk  when  the  commissariat  offi- 
cer was  n't  looking,  and  would  light  his  short 
stocky  pipe,  shaped  very  much  like  himself,  and 
then  we  were  all  off  together  on  a  jaunt  around  the 
world.  He  had  driven  nearly  all  known  "makes" 
of  motor-car  over  most  of  the  map,  apparently 
about  one  car  to  each  country.  Twelve  months 
of  bad  roads  in  a  shelled  district  had  left  him  full 
of  talk,  as  soon  as  he  was  well  lit. 

Up  at  Nieuport,  last  northern  stand  of  the  Al- 
lied line,  a  walking  merchant  would  call  each  day, 
a  basket  around  his  throat,  and  in  the  hamper 
chocolate,  fruit,  and  tobacco.  A  muddy,  un- 


"ENCHANTED  CIGARETTES" 

shaven  Brittany  sailor,  out  of  his  few  sous  a  week, 
bought  us  cigars.  The  less  men  have,  the  more 
generous  they  are.  That  is  an  old  saying,  but  it 
drove  home  to  me  when  I  had  poor  men  do  me 
courtesy  day  by  day  for  five  months.  As  we  mo- 
tored in  and  out  of  Nieuport  in  the  dark  of  the 
night,  we  passed  hundreds  of  silent  men  trudging 
through  the  mud  of  the  gutter.  They  were  troops 
that  had  been  relieved  who  were  marching  back 
for  a  rest.  As  soon  as  they  came  out  of  the  zone 
where  no  sound  can  be  made  and  no  light  shown, 
we  saw  here  and  there  down  the  invisible  ranks 
the  sudden  flare  of  a  match,  and  then  the  glow  in 
the  cup  of  the  hand,  as  the  man  prepared  to  cheer 
himself. 

A  more  somber  and  lonely  watch  even  than  that 
of  these  French  sailors  was  the  vigil  kept  by  our 
good  Belgian  friend,  Commandant  Gilson,  in  the 
shattered  village  of  Pervyse.  With  his  old  Mal- 
tese cat,  he  prowled  through  the  wrecked  place  till 
two  and  three  of  the  morning,  waiting  for  Ger- 
mans to  cross  the  flooded  fields.  For  him  ciga- 
rettes were  an  endless  chain  that  went  through  his 
life.  From  the  expiring  stub  he  lit  his  fresh 

99 


GOLDEN  LADS 

smoke,  as  if  he  were  maintaining  a  vestal  flame. 
He  kept  puffing  till  the  live  butt  singed  his  up- 
turned mustache.  He  squinted  his  eyes  to  escape 
the  ascending  smoke. 

Always  the  cigarette  for  him  and  for  the  other 
men.  Our  cellar  of  nurses  in  Pervyse  kept  a  stock 
of  pipes  and  of  cigarettes  ready  for  tired  soldiers 
off  duty.  The  pipes  remained  as  intact  as  a  col- 
lection in  a  museum.  The  cigarettes  never 
equaled  the  demand.  We  once  took  out  a  earful 
of  supplies  to  300  Belgian  soldiers.  We  gave 
them  their  choice  of  cigarettes  or  smoking  tobacco, 
and  about  250  of  them  selected  cigarettes.  That 
barrack  vote  gives  the  popularity  of  the  cigarette 
among  men  of  French  blood.  Some  cigars,  some 
pipes,  but  everywhere  the  shorter  smoke.  To- 
bacco and  pipe  exhaust  precious  pocket  room. 
The  cigarette  is  portable.  Cigars  break  and  peel 
in  the  kneading  motion  of  walking  and  crouching. 
But  the  cigarette  is  protected  in  its  little  box. 
And  yet,  rather  than  lose  a  smoke,  a  soldier  will 
carry  one  lonesome  cigarette,  rained  on  and  limp 
and  fraying  at  the  end,  drag  it  from  the  depths 
of  a  kit,  dry  it  out,  and  have  a  go.  For,  after  all, 

100 


"ENCHANTED  CIGARETTES" 

it  isn't  for  theoretical  advantages  over  larger, 
longer  smokes  he  likes  it,  but  because  it  is  fitted  to 
his  temperament.  It  is  a  French  and  Belgian 
smoke,  short-lived  and  of  a  light  touch,  as  dear  to 
memory  and  liking  as  the  wines  of  La  Champagne. 
Twice,  in  dramatic  setting,  I  have  seen  tobacco 
intervene  to  give  men  a  release  from  overstrained 
nerves.  Once  it  was  at  a  skirmish.  Behind  a 
street  defense,  crouched  thirty  Belgian  soldiers. 
Shrapnel  began  to  burst  over  us,  and  the  bullets 
tumbled  on  the  cobbles.  With  each  puff  of  the 
shrapnel,  like  a  paper  bag  exploding,  releasing  a 
handful  of  white  smoke,  the  men  flattened  against 
the  walls  and  dove  into  the  open  doors.  The 
sound  of  shrapnel  is  the  same  sound  as  hailstones, 
a  crisp  crackle  as  they  strike  and  bounce.  We 
ran  and  picked  them  up.  They  were  blunted  by 
smiting  on  the  paving.  Any  one  of  them  would 
have  plowed  into  soft  flesh  and  found  the  bone 
and  shattered  it.  They  seem  harmless  because 
they  make  so  little  noise.  They  don't  scream  and 
wail  and  thunder.  Our  guns,  back  on  the  hillocks 
of  the  Ghent  road,  grew  louder  and  more  frequent. 
Each  minute  now  was  cut  into  by  a  roar  or  a 

101 


GOLDEN  LADS 

fainter  rumble.  The  battle  was  on.  Our  bar- 
ricaded street  was  a  pocket  in  the  storm,  like  the 
center  of  a  typhoon. 

Yonder  we  could  see  the  canal,  fifty  feet  away, 
at  the  foot  of  our  street.  On  the  farther  side  be- 
hind the  river  front  houses  lay  the  Germans,  ready 
to  sally  out  and  charge.  It  would  be  all  right  if 
they  came  quickly.  But  a  few  hours  of  waiting 
for  them  on  an  empty  stomach,  and  having  them 
disappoint  us,  was  wearing.  We  wished  they 
would  hurry  and  have  it  over  with,  or  else  go 
away  for  good.  Civilians  stumbling  and  bleeding 
went  past  us. 

And  that  was  how  the  morning  went  by,  heavy 
footed,  unrelieved,  with  a  sense  of  waiting  for  a 
sudden  crash  and  horror.  It  was  peaceful,  in  a 
way,  but,  at  the  heart  of  the  calm,  a  menace.  So 
we  overlaid  the  tension  with  casual  petty  acts. 
We  made  an  informal  pool  of  our  resources  in 
tobacco,  each  man  sharing  with  his  neighbor,  till 
nearly  every  one  of  us  was  puffing  away,  and  de- 
ciding there  was  nothing  to  this  German  attack, 
after  all.  A  smoke  makes  just  the  difference  be- 
tween sticking  it  out  or  acting  the  coward's  part. 

102 


"ENCHANTED  CIGARETTES" 

Each  one  of  us  in  a  lifetime  has  a  day  of  days, 
when  external  event  is  lively,  and  our  inner  mood 
dances  to  the  tune.  Some  of  us  will  perhaps  al- 
ways feel  that  we  spent  our  day  on  October  21, 
1914.  For  we  were  allowed  to  go  into  a  town 
that  fell  in  that  one  afternoon  and  to  come  out 
again  alive.  It  was  the  afternoon  when  Dixmude 
was  leveled  from  a  fair  upstanding  city  to  a  heap 
of  scorched  brick  and  crumbled  plaster.  The 
enemy  guns  from  over  the  Yser  were  accurate  on 
its  houses. 

We  received  our  first  taste  of  the  dread  to  come, 
while  we  were  yet  a  little  way  out.  In  the  road 
ahead  of  us,  a  shell  had  just  splashed  an  artillery 
convoy.  Four  horses,  the  driver,  and  the  splin- 
tered wood  of  the  wagon  were  all  worked  together 
into  one  pulp,  so  that  our  car  skidded  on  it.  We 
entered  the  falling  town  of  Dixmude.  It  was  a 
thick  mess  into  which  we  rode,  with  hot  smoke 
and  fine  masonry  dust  blowing  into  the  eyes. 
Houses  around  us  crumpled  up  at  one  blast, 
and  then  shot  a  thick  brown  cloud  of  dust,  and 
out  of  the  cloud  a  high  central  flame  that  leaped 
and  spread.  With  the  wailing  of  shells  in  the 

103 


GOLDEN  LADS 

air,  every  few  seconds,  the  thud  and  thunder  of 
their  impact,  the  scattering  of  the  shattered  metal, 
it  was  one  of  the  hot,  thorough  bombardments  of 
the  war.  It  cleared  the  town  of  troops,  after 
tearing  their  ranks.  But  it  left  wounded  men  in 
the  cellar  of  the  Hotel  de  Ville.  The  Grand 
Place  and  the  Hotel  were  the  center  of  the  fire. 
Here  we  had  to  wait  fifteen  minutes,  while  the 
wounded  were  made  ready  for  our  two  cars.  It 
was  then  we  turned  to  tobacco  as  to  a  friend.  I 
remember  the  easement  that  came  when  I  found 
I  had  cigars  in  my  waistcoat  pocket.  The  act  of 
lighting  a  cigar,  and  pulling  at  it  briskly,  was  a 
relief. 

There  was  a  second  of  time  when  we  could  hear 
a  shell,  about  to  burst  close,  before  it  struck.  It 
came,  sharpening  its  nose  on  the  air,  making  a 
shrill  whistle  with  a  moan  in  it,  that  gathered  vol- 
ume as  it  neared.  There  was  a  menace  in  the 
sound.  It  seemed  to  approach  in  a  vast  envelop- 
ing mass  that  can't  be  escaped,  filling  all  out-doors, 
and  sure  to  find  you.  It  was  as  if  the  all-includ- 
ing sound  were  the  missile  itself,  with  no  hiding 
place  offered.  And  yet  the  shell  is  generally  a 

104 


DOOR  CHALKED  BY  THE  GERMANS. 

One  of  the  100  houses  in  Termonde  with  the  direction  "Do  not 
Burn  written  in  German.  One  thousand  one  hundred  houses  were  burned, 
jhouse  by  house.  Photograph  by  Radclyffe  Dugmore. 


"ENCHANTED  CIGARETTES" 

little  three-or-four  inch  thing,  like  a  flower-pot, 
hurtling  through  the  scenery.  But  bruised  nerves 
refuse  to  listen  to  reason,  and  again  and  again  I 
ducked  as  I  heard  that  high  wail,  believing  I  was 
about  to  be  struck. 

In  that  second  of  tension,  it  was  a  pleasant 
thing  to  draw  in  on  a  butt — to  discharge  the 
smoke,  a  second  later,  carelessly,  as  who  should 
say,  "It  is  nothing."  The  little  cylinder  was  a 
lightning  conductor  to  lead  away  the  danger  from 
a  vital  part.  It  let  the  nervousness  leak  off  into 
biting  and  puffing,  and  making  a  play  of  fingering 
the  stub,  instead  of  striking  into  the  stomach  and 
the  courage.  It  gave  the  troubled  face  something 
to  do,  and  let  the  writhing  hand  busy  itself.  It 
saved  me  from  knowing  just  how  frightened  I 
was. 

But  what  of  the  wounded  themselves*?  They 
have  to  endure  all  that  dreariness  of  long  waiting, 
and  the  pressure  of  danger,  and  then,  for  good 
measure,  a  burden  of  pain.  So  I  come  to  the  men 
who  are  revealing  human  nature  at  a  higher  pitch 
than  any  others  in  the  war.  The  trench-digging, 
elderly  chaps  are  patient  and  long-enduring,  and 

107 


GOLDEN  LADS 

the  fighting  men  are  as  gallant  as  any  the  ballad- 
mongers  used  to  rime  about. 

But  it  is  of  the  wounded  that  one  would  like 
to  speak  in  a  way  to  win  respect  for  them  rather 
than  pity.  I  think  some  American  observers  have 
missed  the  truth  about  the  wounded.  They  have 
told  of  the  groaning  and  screaming,  the  heavy 
smells,  the  delays  and  neglect.  It  is  a  picture  of 
vivid  horror.  But  the  final  impression  left  on 
me  by  caring  for  many  hundred  wounded  men  is 
that  of  their  patience  and  cheeriness.  I  think 
they  would  resent  having  a  sordid  pen  picture 
made  of  their  suffering  and  letting  it  go  at  that. 
After  all,  it  is  their  wound:  they  suffered  it  for  a 
purpose,  and  they  conquer  their  bodily  pain  by 
will  power  and  the  Gallic  touch  of  humor.  Suf- 
fering borne  nobly  merits  something  more  than 
an  emphasis  on  the  blood  and  the  moan.  To 
speak  of  these  wounded  men  as  of  a  heap  of  futile 
misery  is  like  missing  the  worthiness  of  mother- 
hood in  the  details  of  obstetrics. 

It  was  thought  we  moderns  had  gone  soft,  but 
it  seems  we  were  storing  up  reserves  of  stoic 
strength  and  courage.  This  war  has  drawn  on 

108 


"ENCHANTED  CIGARETTES" 

them  more  heavily  than  any  former  test,  and  they 
have  met  all  its  demands.  Sometimes,  being 
tired,  I  would  drop  my  corner  of  the  stretcher,  a 
few  inches  suddenly.  This  would  draw  a  quick 
intake  of  the  breath  from  the  hurt  man  and  an 
"aahh" — but  not  once  a  word  of  blame.  I  should 
want  to  curse  the  careless  hand  that  wrenched  my 
wound,  but  these  soldiers  of  France  and  Belgium 
whom  I  carried  had  passed  beyond  littleness. 

Once  we  had  a  French  Zouave  officer  on  the 
stretcher.  He  was  wounded  in  the  right  arm  and 
the  stomach.  Every  careen  of  the  ambulance  over 
cobble  and  into  shell-hole  was  a  thrust  into  his 
hurt.  We  had  to  carry  him  all  the  way  from  the 
Nieuport  cellar  to  Zuydcoote  Hospital,  ten  miles. 
The  driver  was  one  more  of  the  American  young 
men  who  have  gone  over  into  France  to  pay  back 
a  little  of  what  we  owe  her.  I  want  to  give  his 
name,  Robert  Cardell  Toms,  because  it  is  good  for 
us  to  know  that  we  have  brave  and  tender  gen- 
tlemen. On  this  long  haul,  as  always,  he  drove 
with  extreme  care,  changing  his  speed  without  the 
staccato  jerk,  avoiding  bumps  and  holes  of  the  try- 
ing road.  When  we  reached  the  hospital,  he  ran 

109 


GOLDEN  LADS 

ahead  into  the  ward  to  prepare  the  bed.  The 
officer  beckoned  me  to  him.  He  spoke  with  some 
difficulty,  as  the  effort  caught  him  in  the  wound 
of  his  stomach. 

"Please  be  good  enough,"  he  said,  "to  give  my 
thanks  to  the  chauffeur.  He  has  driven  me  down 
with  much  consideration.  He  cares  for  wounded 
men." 

Where  other  races  are  grateful  and  inarticulate, 
the  French  are  able  to  put  into  speech  the  last  fine 
touch  of  feeling. 

My  friend  kept  a  supply  of  cigarettes  for  his 
ambulance  cases,  and  as  soon  as  the  hour-long 
drive  began  we  dealt  them  out  to  the  bandaged 
men.  How  often  we  have  started  with  a  groaning 
man  for  the  ride  to  Zuydcoote,  and  how  well  the 
trip  went,  when  we  had  lighted  his  cigarette  for 
him.  It  brought  back  a  little  of  the  conversation 
and  the  merriment  which  it  had  called  out  in  bet- 
ter days.  It  is  such  a  relief  to  be  wounded.  You 
have  done  your  duty,  and  now  you  are  to  have  a 
little  rest-  With  a  clear  conscience,  you  can  sink 
back  into  laziness,  far  away  from  noise  and  filth. 
Luck  has  come  along  and  pulled  the  pack  off  your 

no 


"ENCHANTED  CIGARETTES" 

back,  and  the  responsibility  from  your  sick  mind. 
No  weary  city  clerk  ever  went  to  his  seashore  holi- 
day with  more  blitheness  than  some  of  our 
wounded  showed  as  they  came  riding  in  from  the 
Nieuport  trenches  at  full  length  on  the  stretcher, 
and  singing  all  the  way.  What  is  a  splintered 
forehead  or  a  damaged  leg  compared  to  the  happi- 
ness of  an  honorable  discharge?  Nothing  to 
do  for  a  month  but  lie  quietly,  and  watch  the 
wholesome,  clean-clad  nurse.  I  am  not  forgetting 
the  sadness  of  many  men,  nor  the  men  hurt  to 
death,  who  lay  motionless  and  did  not  sing,  and 
some  of  whom  died  while  we  were  on  the  road  to 
help.  I  am  only  trying  to  tell  of  the  one  man  in 
every  four  who  was  glad  of  his  enforced  rest,  and 
who  did  n't  let  a  little  thing  like  agony  conquer 
his  gaiety.  Those  men  were  the  Joyous 
Wounded.  I  have  seldom  seen  men  more  light 
hearted. 

Word  came  to  my  wife  one  day  that  several 
hundred  wounded  were  side-tracked  at  Furnes 
railway  station.  With  two  nurses  she  hurried 
to  them,  carrying  hot  soup.  The  women  went 
through  the  train,  feeding  the  soldiers,  giving 

111 


GOLDEN  LADS 

them  a  drink  of  cold  water,  and  bringing  some  of 
them  hot  water  for  washing.  Then,  being  fed, 
they  were  ready  for  a  smoke,  and  my  wife  began 
walking  down  the  foul-smelling  ambulance  car 
with  boxes  of  supplies,  letting  each  man  take  out 
a  cigarette  and  a  match.  The  car  was  slung  with 
double  layers  of  stretcher  bunks.  Some  men 
were  freshly  wounded,  others  were  convalescent. 
A  few  lay  in  a  stupor.  She  provided  ten  or 
a  dozen  soldiers  with  their  pleasure,  and  they 
lighted  up  and  were  well  under  way.  She  had  so 
many  patients  that  day  that  she  was  not  watching 
the  individual  man  in  her  general  distribution. 
She  came  half  way  down  the  car,  and  held  out 
her  store  to  a  soldier  without  looking  at  him.  He 
glanced  up  and  grinned.  The  men  in  the  bunks 
around  him  laughed  heartily.  Then  she  looked 
down  at  him.  He  was  flapping  the  two  stumps 
of  his  arms  and  was  smiling.  His  hands  had  been 
blown  off.  She  put  the  cigarette  in  his  mouth 
and  lit  it  for  him.  Only  his  hands  were  gone. 
Comradeship  was  left  for  him,  and  here  was  the 
lighted  cigarette  expressing  that  comradeship. 


112 


WAS  IT  REAL? 

THE  man  was  an  old-time  friend.  In  the 
days  of  our  youth,  we  had  often  worked  to- 
gether. He  was  small  and  nervous,  with  a  quick 
eye.  He  always  wore  me  down  after  a  few  hours, 
because  he  was  restless  and  untiring.  He  was 
named  Romeyn  Rossiter — one  of  those  well-born 
names.  We  had  met  in  times  before  the  advent 
of  the  telescopic  lens,  and  he  used  a  box  camera, 
tuned  to  a  fiftieth  of  a  second.  Together  we 
snapped  polo  ponies,  coming  at  full  tilt  after  the 
ball,  riding  each  other  off,  while  he  would  stand 
between  the  goal-posts,  as  they  zigzagged  down  on 
him.  I  had  to  shove  him  out  of  the  way,  at  the 
last  tick,  when  the  hoofs  were  loud.  I  often  won- 
dered if  those  ponies  did  n't  look  suddenly  large 
and  imminent  on  the  little  glass  rectangle  into 
which  he  was  peering.  That  was  the  kind  of  per- 
son he  was.  He  was  glued  to  his  work.  He  was 
a  curious  man,  because  that  nerve  of  fear,  which  is 
well  developed  in  most  of  us,  was  left  out  of  his 


GOLDEN  LADS 

make-up.  No  credit  to  him.  It  merely  was  n't 
there.  He  was  color-blind  to  danger.  He  had 
spent  his  life  everywhere  by  bits,  so  he  had  the 
languages.  I  used  to  admire  that  in  him,  the  way 
he  could  career  along  with  a  Frenchman,  and 
exchange  talk  with  a  German  waiter :  high  speed, 
and  a  kind  of  racy  quality. 

I  used  to  write  the  text  around  his  pictures, 
captions  underneath  them,  and  then  words  spilled 
out  over  the  white  paper  between  his  six  by  tens. 
We  published  in  the  country  life  magazines. 
They  gave  generous  big  display  pages.  In  those 
days  people  used  to  read  what  I  wrote,  because 
they  wanted  to  find  out  about  the  pictures,  and 
the  pictures  were  fine.  You  must  have  seen  Ros- 
siter's  work — caribou,  beavers,  Walter  Travis  com- 
ing through  with  a  stroke,  and  Holcombe  Ward 
giving  a  twist  delivery.  We  had  the  field  to  our- 
selves for  two  or  three  years,  before  the  other 
fellows  caught  the  idea,  and  broke  our  partner- 
ship. I  turned  to  literature,  and  he  began  drift- 
ing around  the  world  for  long  shots.  He  'd  be 
gone  six  months,  and  then  turn  up  with  big  game 
night  pictures  out  of  Africa — a  lion  drinking  un- 

114 


WAS  IT  REAL? 

der  a  tropical  moon.  Two  more  years,  and  I  had 
lost  him  entirely.  But  I  knew  we  should  meet. 
He  was  one  of  those  chaps  that,  once  in  your  life, 
is  like  the  motif  in  an  opera,  or  like  the  high-class 
story,  which  starts  with  an  insignificant  loose  brick 
on  a  coping  and  ends  with  that  brick  smiting  the 
hero's  head. 

It  was  London  where  I  ran  into  him  at  last. 

"Happy  days?"  I  said,  with  a  rising  inflection. 

"So,  so,"  he  answered. 

He  was  doing  the  free-lance  game.  He  had 
drifted  over  to  England  with  his  $750  moving- 
picture  machine  to  see  what  he  could  harvest  with 
a  quiet  eye,  and  they  had  rung  in  the  war  on  him. 
He  was  n't  going  to  be  happy  till  he  could  get  the 
boys  in  action.  Would  I  go  to  Belgium  with 
him?  I  would. 

Next  day,  we  took  the  Channel  ferry  from 
Dover  to  Ostend,  went  by  train  to  Ghent,  and 
trudged  out  on  foot  to  the  battle  of  Alost. 

Those  were  the  early  days  of  the  war  when  you 
could  go  anywhere,  if  you  did  it  nicely.  The 
Belgians  are  a  friendly  people.  They  can't  bear 
to  say  No,  and  if  they  saw  a  hard-working  man 


GOLDEN  LADS 

come  along  with  his  eye  on  his  job,  they  did  n't 
like  to  turn  him  back,  even  if  he  was  mussing 
up  an  infantry  formation  or  exposing  a  trench. 
They  'd  rather  share  the  risk,  as  long  as  it  brought 
him  in  returns. 

When  we  footed  it  out  that  morning,  we  did  n't 
know  we  were  in  for  one  of  the  Famous  Days  of 
history.  You  never  can  tell  in  this  war.  Some- 
times you'll  trot  out  to  the  front,  all  keyed  up, 
and  then  sit  around  among  the  "Set-Sanks"  for  a 
month  playing  pinochle,  and  watching  the  flies 
chase  each  other  across  the  marmalade.  And 
then  a  sultry  dull  day  will  suddenly  show  you 
things.  .  .  . 

Out  from  the  Grand  Place  of  Alost  radiate  nar- 
row little  streets  that  run  down  to  the  canal,  like 
spokes  of  a  wheel.  Each  little  street  had  its  earth- 
works and  group  of  defenders.  Out  over  the 
canal  stretched  footbridges,  and  these  were  thickly 
sown  with  barbed  wire. 

"Great  luck,"  said  Rossiter.  "They  're  making 
an  old-time  barricade.  It's  as  good  as  the  days 
of  the  Commune.  Do  you  remember  your  street- 
fighting  in  Les  Miserables?" 

116 


WAS  IT  REAL? 

"I  surely  do,"  I  replied.  "Breast  high  earth- 
works, and  the  'citizens'  crouched  behind  under 
the  rattle  of  bullets." 

"This  is  going  to  be  good,"  he  went  on  in 
high  enthusiasm.  The  soldiers  were  rolling  heavy 
barrels  to  the  gutter,  and  knocking  off  the  heads. 
The  barrels  were  packed  with  fish,  about  six  inches 
long,  with  scales  that  went  blue  and  white  in  the 
fresh  morning  light.  The  fish  slithered  over  the 
cobbles,  and  the  soldiers  stumbled  on  their  slip- 
pery bodies.  They  set  the  barrels  on  end,  side  by 
side,  and  heaped  the  cracks  between  and  the  face 
with  sods  of  earth,  thick-packed  clods,  with  grass 
growing.  The  grass  was  bright  green,  unwilted. 
A  couple  of  peasant  hand-carts  were  tilted  on  end, 
and  the  flooring  sodded  like  the  barrels. 

"Look  who  's  coming,"  pointed  Rossiter,  swivel- 
ing  his  lens  sharply  around. 

Steaming  gently  into  our  narrow  street  from  the 
Grand  Place  came  a  great  Sava  mitrailleuse — big 
steel  turret,  painted  lead  blue,  three  men  sitting 
behind  the  swinging  turret.  One  of  the  men, 
taller  by  a  head  than  his  fellows,  had  a  white  rag 
bound  round  his  head,  where  a  bullet  had  clipped 

117 


GOLDEN  LADS 

off  a  piece  of  his  forehead  the  week  before.  His 
face  was  set  and  pale.  Sitting  on  high,  in  the 
grim  machine,  with  his  bandage  worn  as  a  plume, 
he  looked  like  the  presiding  spirit  of  the  fra- 
cas. 

"It 's  worth  the  trip,"  muttered  Romeyn,  grind- 
ing away  on  his  crank. 

There  was  something  silent  and  efficient  in  the 
look  of  the  big  man  and  the  big  car,  with  its  slim- 
waisted,  bright  brass  gun  shoving  through. 

"Here,  have  a  cigarette,"  said  Rossiter,  as  the 
powerful  thing  glided  by. 

He  passed  up  a  box  to  the  three  gunners. 

"Bonne  chance"  said  the  big  man,  as  he  puffed 
out  rings  and  fondled  the  trim  bronze  body  of  his 
Lady  of  Death.  They  let  the  car  slide  down  the 
street  to  the  left  end  of  the  barricade,  where  it 
came  to  rest. 

Over  the  canal,  out  from  the  smoke-misted 
houses,  came  a  peasant  running.  In  his  arms  he 
carried  a  little  girl.  Her  hair  was  light  as  flax, 
and  crested  with  a  knot  of  very  bright  red  rib- 
bon. Hair  and  gay  ribbon  caught  the  eye,  as  soon 
as  they  were  borne  out  of  the  doomed  houses. 

118 


WAS  IT  REAL? 

The  father  carried  the  little  one  to  the  bridge  at 
the  foot  of  our  street,  and  began  crossing  towards 
us.  The  barbed  wire  looked  angry  in  the  morning 
sun.  He  had  to  weave  his  way  patiently,  with 
the  child  held  flat  to  his  shoulder.  Any  hasty 
motion  would  have  torn  her  face  on  the  barbs. 
Shrapnel  was  sailing  high  overhead  between  the 
two  forces,  and  there,  thirty  feet  under  the  cross- 
fire, this  man  and  his  child  squirmed  their  way 
through  the  barrier.  They  won  through,  and  were 
lifted  over  the  barricade.  As  the  father  went 
stumbling  past  me,  I  looked  into  the  face  of  the 
girl.  Her  eyes  were  tightly  closed.  She  nestled 
contentedly. 

"Did  you  get  it,  man*?  Did  you  get  it?"  I 
asked  Rossiter. 

"Too  far,"  he  replied,  mournfully,  "only  a  dot 
at  that  distance." 

Now,  all  the  parts  had  fitted  into  the  pattern, 
the  gay  green  grass  growing  out  of  the  stacked 
barrels  and  carts,  and  the  sullen,  silent,  waiting 
mitrailleuse  which  can  spit  death  in  a  wide  swathe 
as  it  revolves  from  side  to  side,  like  the  full  stroke 
of  a  scythe  on  nodding  daisies.  The  bark  of  it  is 

119 


GOLDEN  LADS 

as  alarming  as  its  bite — an  incredibly  rapid  rat- 
tat  that  makes  men  fall  on  their  faces  when  they 
hear,  like  worshipers  at  the  bell  of  the  Transub- 
stantiation. 

"She  talks  three  hundred  words  to  the  minute," 
said  Romeyn  to  me. 

"How  are  you  coming*?"  I  asked. 

"Great,"  he  answered,  "great  stuff.  Now,  if 
only  something  happens." 

He  had  planted  his  tripod  fifty  feet  back  of  the 
barricade,  plumb  against  a  red-brick,  three-story 
house,  so  that  the  lens  raked  the  street  and  its  de- 
fenses diagonally.  Thirty  minutes  we  waited, 
with  shell  fire  far  to  the  right  of  us,  falling  into 
the  center  of  the  town  with  a  rumble,  like  a  train 
of  cars  heard  in  the  night,  when  one  is  half  asleep. 
That  was  the  sense  of  things  to  me,  as  I  stood  in 
the  street,  waiting  for  hell  to  blow  off  its  lid.  It 
was  a  dream  world,  and  I  was  the  dreamer,  in  the 
center  of  the  strange  unfolding  sight,  seeing  it  all 
out  of  a  muffled  consciousness. 

Another  quarter  hour,  and  Rossiter  began  to 
fidget. 

"Do  you  call  this  a  battle?"  he  asked. 

120 


WAS  IT  REAL? 

"The  liveliest  thing  in  a  month,"  replied  the 
lieutenant. 

"We  've  got  to  brisk  it  up,"  Rossiter  said. 
"Now,  I  tell  you  what  we  '11  do.  Let 's  have  a 
battle  that  looks  something  like.  These  real 
things  have  n't  got  speed  enough  for  a  five-cent 
house." 

In  a  moment,  all  was  action.  Those  amazing 
Belgians,  as  responsive  as  children  in  a  game,  fell 
to  furiously  to  create  confusion  and  swift  event 
out  of  the  trance  of  peace.  The  battered  giant 
in  the  Sava  released  a  cloud  of  steam  from  his 
car.  The  men  aimed  their  rifles  in  swift  staccato. 
The  lieutenant  dashed  back  and  forth  from  curb 
to  curb,  plunging  to  the  barricade,  and  then  to  the 
half  dozen  boys  who  were  falling  back,  crouching 
on  one  knee,  firing,  and  then  retreating.  He 
cheered  them  with  pats  on  the  shoulder,  pointed 
out  new  unsuspected  enemies.  Then,  man  by 
man,  the  thirty  perspiring  fighters  began  to  tum- 
ble. They  fell  forward  on  their  faces,  lay  stricken 
on  their  backs,  heaved  against  the  walls  of  houses, 
wherever  the  deadly  fire  had  caught  them.  The 
street  was  littered  with  Belgian  bodies.  There 

121 


GOLDEN  LADS 

stood  Rossiter  grinding  away  on  his  handle,  snick- 
ering green-clad  Belgians  lying  strewn  on  the  cob- 
bles, a  half  dozen  of  them  tense  and  set  behind  the 
barricade,  leveling  rifles  at  the  piles  of  fish. 
Every  one  was  laughing,  and  all  of  them  intent  on 
working  out  a  picture  with  thrills. 

The  enemy  guns  had  been  growing  menacing, 
but  Rossiter  and  the  Belgians  were  very  busy. 

"The  shells  are  dropping  just  back  of  us,"  I 
called  to  him. 

"Good,  good,"  he  said,  "but  I  have  n't  time  for 
them  just  yet,  They  must  wait.  You  can't 
crowd  a  film." 

Ten  minutes  passed. 

"It  is  immense,"  began  he,  wiping  his  face  and 
lighting  a  smoke,  and  turning  his  handle.  "Gen- 
tlemen, I  thank  you." 

"Gentlemen,  we  thank  you,"  I  said. 

"There  's  been  nothing  like  it,"  he  went  on. 
"Those  Liege  pictures  of  Wilson's  at  the  Hippo- 
drome were  tame." 

He  'd  got  it  all  in,  and  was  wasting  a  few  feet 
for  good  measure.  Sometimes  you  need  a  fringe 
in  order  to  bring  out  the  big  minute  in  your  action. 

122 


WAS  IT  REAL? 

Suddenly,  we  heard  the  wailing  overhead  and 
louder  than  any  of  the  other  shells.  Louder 
meant  closer.  It  lasted  a  second  of  time,  and 
then  crashed  into  the  second  story  of  the  red  house, 
six  feet  over  Rossiter's  head.  A  shower  of  brown 
brick  dust,  and  a  puff  of  gray-black  smoke  settled 
down  over  the  machine  and  man,  and  blotted  him 
out  of  sight  for  a  couple  of  seconds.  Then  we 
all  coughed  and  spat,  and  the  air  cleared.  The 
tripod  had  careened  in  the  fierce  rush  of  air,  but 
Rossiter  had  caught  it  and  was  righting  it.  He 
went  on  turning.  His  face  was  streaked  with 
black,  and  his  clothes  were  brown  with  dust. 

"Trying  to  get  the  smoke,"  he  called,  "but  I  Jm 
afraid  it  won't  register." 

Maybe  you  want  to  know  how  that  film  took. 
We  hustled  it  back  to  London,  and  it  went  with 
a  whizz.  One  hundred  and  twenty-six  picture 
houses  produced  "STREET  FIGHTING  IN  ALOST." 
The  daily  illustrated  papers  ran  it  front  page. 
The  only  criticism  of  it  that  I  heard  was  another 
movie  man,  who  was  sore — a  chap  named  Wilson. 

"That  picture  is  faked,"  he  asserted. 

"I'll  bet  you,"  I  retorted,  "that  picture  was 
125 


GOLDEN  LADS 

taken  under  shell  fire  during  the  bombardment  of 
Alost.  That  barricade  is  the  straight  goods.  The 
fellow  that  took  it  was  shot  full  of  gas  while  he 
was  taking  it.  What's  your  idea  of  the  real 
thing?" 

"That 's  all  right,"  he  said;  "the  ruins  are  good, 
and  the  smoke  is  there.  But  I  've  seen  that  reel 
three  times,  and  every  time  the  dead  man  in  the 
gutter  laughed." 


126 


"CHANTONS,  BELGES!  CHANTONS!" 

HERE  at  home  I  am  in  a  land  where  the 
wholesale  martyrdom  of  Belgium  is  re- 
garded as  of  doubtful  authenticity.  We  who 
have  witnessed  widespread  atrocities  are  subjected 
to  a  critical  process  as  cold  as  if  we  were  advanc- 
ing a  new  program  of  social  reform.  I  begin  to 
wonder  if  anything  took  place  in  Flanders.  Is  n't 
the  wreck  of  Termonde,  where  I  thought  I  spent 
two  days,  perhaps  a  figment  of  the  fancy?  Was 
the  bayoneted  girl  child  of  Alost  a  pleasant  dream 
creation1?  My  people  are  busy  and  indifferent, 
generous  and  neutral,  but  yonder  several  races 
are  living  at  a  deeper  level.  In  a  time  when  be- 
liefs are  held  lightly,  with  tricky  words  tearing 
at  old  values,  they  have  recovered  the  ancient 
faiths  of  the  race.  Their  lot,  with  all  its  pain,  is 
choicer  than  ours.  They  at  least  have  felt  greatly 
and  thrown  themselves  into  action.  It  is  a  stern 
fight  that  is  on  in  Europe,  and  few  of  our  coun- 

127 


GOLDEN  LADS 

trymen  realize  it  is  our  fight  that  the  Allies  are 
making. 

Europe  has  made  an  old  discovery.  The  Greek 
Anthology  has  it,  and  the  ballads,  but  our  busy 
little  merchants  and  our  clever  talkers  have  never 
known  it.  The  best  discovery  a  man  can  make  is 
that  there  is  something  inside  him  bigger  than  his 
fear,  a  belief  in  something  more  lasting  than  his 
individual  life.  When  he  discovers  that,  he 
knows  he,  too,  is  a  man.  It  is  as  real  for  him 
as  the  experience  of  motherhood  for  a  woman. 
He  comes  out  of  it  with  self-respect  and  gladness. 

The  Belgians  were  a  soft  people,  pleasure-lov- 
ing little  chaps,  social  and  cheery,  fond  of  com- 
fort and  the  cafe  brightness.  They  lacked  the  in- 
tensity of  blood  of  unmixed  single  strains.  They 
were  cosmopolitan,  often  with  a  command  over 
three  languages  and  snatches  of  several  dialects. 
They  were  easy  in  their  likes.  They  "made 
friends"  lightly.  They  did  not  have  the  reserve 
of  the  English,  the  spiritual  pride  of  the  Ger- 
mans. Some  of  them  have  German  blood,  some 
French,  some  Dutch.  Part  of  the  race  is  gay 
and  volatile,  many  are  heavy  and  inarticulate; 

128 


"CHANTONS,  BELGES!     CHANTONS!" 

it  is  a  mixed  race  of  which  any  iron-clad  gen- 
eralization is  false.  But  I  have  seen  many  thou- 
sands of  them  under  crisis,  seen  them  hungry,  dy- 
ing, men  from  every  class  and  every  region;  and 
the  mass  impression  is  that  they  are  affectionate, 
easy  to  blend  with,  open-handed,  trusting. 

This  kindly,  haphazard,  unformed  folk  were 
suddenly  lifted  to  a  national  self-sacrifice.  By 
one  act  of  defiance  Albert  made  Belgium  a  nation. 
It  had  been  a  mixed  race  of  many  tongues,  selling 
itself  little  by  little,  all  unconsciously,  to  the  Ger- 
man bondage.  I  saw  the  marks  of  this  spiritual 
invasion  on  the  inner  life  of  the  Belgians — marks 
of  a  destruction  more  thorough  than  the  shelling 
of  a  city.  The  ruins  of  Termonde  are  only  the 
outward  and  visible  sign  of  what  Germany  has 
attempted  on  Belgium  for  more  than  a  genera- 
tion. 

Perhaps  it  was  better  that  people  should  perish 
by  the  villageful  in  honest  physical  death  through 
the  agony  of  the  bayonet  and  the  flame  than  that 
they  should  go  on  bartering  away  their  nationality 
by  piece-meal.  Who  knows  but  Albert  saw  in 
his  silent  heart  that  the  only  thing  to  weld  his 

129 


GOLDEN  LADS 

people  together,  honeycombed  as  they  were,  was 
the  shedding  of  blood?  Perhaps  nothing  short  of 
a  supreme  sacrifice,  amounting  to  a  martyrdom, 
could  restore  a  people  so  tangled  in  German  in- 
trigue, so  netted  into  an  ever-encroaching  system 
of  commerce,  carrying  with  it  a  habit  of  thought 
and  a  mouthful  of  guttural  phrases.  Let  no  one 
underestimate  that  power  of  language.  If  the 
idiom  has  passed  into  one,  it  has  brought  with  it 
molds  of  thought,  leanings  of  sympathy.  Who 
that  can  even  stumble  through  the  "Marchons! 
Marchons!"  of  the  "Marseillaise"  but  is  a  sharer 
for  a  moment  in  the  rush  of  glory  that  every  now 
and  again  has  made  France  the  light  of  the  world*? 
So,  when  the  German  phrase  rings  out,  "Was  wir 
haben  bleibt  Deutsch" — "What  we  are  now  hold- 
ing by  force  of  arms  shall  remain  forever  German" 
— there  is  an  answering  thrill  in  the  heart  of  every 
Antwerp  clerk  who  for  years  has  been  leaking  Bel- 
gian government  gossip  into  German  ears  in  re- 
turn for  a  piece  of  money.  Secret  sin  was  eat- 
ing away  Belgium's  vitality — the  sin  of  being 
bought  by  German  money,  bought  in  little  ways, 
for  small  bits  of  service,  amiable  passages  destroy- 

130 


"CHANTONS,  BELGES!     CHANTONS!" 

ing  nationality.  By  one  act  of  full  sacrifice  Al- 
bert has  cleared  his  people  from  a  poison  that 
might  have  sapped  them  in  a  few  more  years  with- 
out the  firing  of  one  gun. 

That  sacrifice  to  which  they  are  called  is  an 
utter  one,  of  which  they  have  experienced  only 
the  prelude.  I  have  seen  this  growing  sadness  of 
Belgium  almost  from  the  beginning.  I  have  seen 
thirty  thousand  refugees,  the  inhabitants  of  Alost, 
come  shuffling  down  the  road  past  me.  They 
came  by  families,  the  father  with  a  bag  of  clothes 
and  bread,  the  mother  with  a  baby  in  arms,  and 
one,  two,  or  three  children  trotting  along.  Aged 
women  were  walking,  Sisters  of  Charity,  religious 
brothers.  A  cartful  of  stricken  old  women  lay 
patiently  at  full  length  while  the  wagon  bumped 
on.  They  were  so  nearly  drowned  by  suffering 
that  one  more  wave  made  little  difference.  All 
that  was  sad  and  helpless  was  dragged  that  morn- 
ing into  the  daylight.  All  that  had  been  decently 
cared  for  in  quiet  rooms  was  of  a  sudden  tumbled 
out  upon  the  pavement  and  jolted  along  in  farm- 
wagons  past  sixteen  miles  of  curious  eyes.  But 
even  with  the  sick  and  the  very  old  there  was 


GOLDEN  LADS 

no  lamentation.  In  this  procession  of  the  dispos- 
sessed that  passed  us  on  the  country  road  there  was 
no  one  crying,  no  one  angry. 

I  have  seen  5000  of  these  refugees  at  night 
in  the  Halle  des  Fetes  of  Ghent,  huddled  in  the 
straw,  their  faces  bleached  white  under  the  glare 
of  the  huge  municipal  lights.  On  the  wall,  I 
read  the  names  of  the  children  whose  parents  had 
been  lost,  and  the  names  of  the  parents  who  re- 
ported a  lost  baby,  a  boy,  a  girl,  and  sometimes 
all  the  children  lost. 

A  little  later  came  the  time  when  the  people 
learned  their  last  stronghold  was  tottering.  I  re- 
member sitting  at  dinner  in  the  home  of  Monsieur 
Caron,  a  citizen  of  Ghent.  I  had  spent  that  day 
in  Antwerp,  and  the  soldiers  had  told  me  of  the 
destruction  of  the  outer  rim  of  forts.  So  I  be- 
gan to  say  to  the  dinner  guests  that  the  city  was 
doomed.  As  I  spoke,  I  glanced  at  Madame 
Caron.  Her  eyes  filled  with  tears.  I  turned  to 
another  Belgian  lady,  and  had  to  look  away. 
Not  a  sound  came  from  them. 

When  the  handful  of  British  were  sent  to  the 
rescue  of  Antwerp,  we  went  up  the  road  with 

132 


"CHANTONS,  BELGES!     CHANTONS!" 

them.  There  was  joy  on  the  Antwerp  road  that 
day.  Little  cottages  fluttered  flags  at  lintel  and 
window.  The  sidewalks  were  thronged  with 
peasants,  who  believed  they  were  now  to  be  saved. 
We  rode  in  glory  from  Ghent  to  the  outer  works 
of  Antwerp.  Each  village  on  all  the  line  turned 
out  its  full  population  to  cheer  us  ecstatically. 
A  bitter  month  had  passed,  and  now  salvation  had 
come.  It  is  seldom  in  a  lifetime  one  is  present  at 
a  perfect  piece  of  irony  like  that  of  those  shout- 
ing Flemish  peasants. 

As  Antwerp  was  falling,  a  letter  was  given  to 
me  by  a  friend.  It  was  written  by  Aloysius  Coen 
of  the  artillery,  Fort  St.  Catherine  Wavre,  Ant- 
werp. He  died  in  the  bombardment,  thirty-four 
years  old.  He  wrote: 

Dear  wife  and  children: 

At  the  moment  that  I  am  writing  you  this  the  enemy 
is  before  us,  and  the  moment  has  come  for  us  to  do  our 
duty  for  our  country.  When  you  will  have  received 
this  I  shall  have  changed  the  temporary  life  for  the 
eternal  life.  As  I  loved  you  all  dearly,  my  last  breath 
will  be  directed  toward  you  and  my  darling  children, 
and  with  a  last  smile  as  a  farewell  from  my  beloved 
family  am  I  undertaking  the  eternal  journey. 

135 


GOLDEN  LADS 

I  hope,  whatever  may  be  your  later  call,  you  will  take 
good  care  of  my  dear  children,  and  always  keep  them 
in  mind  of  the  straight  road,  always  ask  them  to  pray 
for  their  father,  who  in  sadness,  though  doing  his  duty 
for  his  country,  has  had  to  leave  them  so  young. 

Say  good-by  for  me  to  my  dear  brothers  and  sisters, 
from  whom  I  also  carry  with  me  a  great  love. 

Farewell,  dear  wife,  children,  and  family. 

Your  always  remaining  husband,  father,  and  brother. 

ALOYS. 

Then  Antwerp  fell,  and  a  people  that  had  for 
the  first  time  in  memory  found  itself  an  indi- 
visible and  self-conscious  state  broke  into  sullen 
flight,  and  its  merry,  friendly  army  came  heavy- 
footed  down  the  road  to  another  country. 
Grieved  and  embittered,  they  served  under  new 
leaders  of  another  race.  Those  tired  soldiers 
were  like  spirited  children  who  had  been  playing 
an  exciting  game  which  they  thought  would  be 
applauded.  And  suddenly  the  best  turned  out 
the  worst. 

Sing,  Belgians,  sing,  though  our  wounds  are  bleeding, 

writes  the  poet  of  Flanders;  but  the  song  is  no 
earthly  song.     It  is  the  voice  of  a  lost  cause  that 

136 


"CHANTONS,  BELGES!     CHANTONS!" 

cries  out  of  the  trampled  dust  as  it  prepares  to 
make  its  flight  beyond  the  place  of  betrayal. 

For  the  Belgian  soldiers  no  longer  sang,  or 
made  merry  in  the  evening.  A  young  Brussels 
corporal  in  our  party  suddenly  broke  into  sob- 
bing when  he  heard  the  chorus  of  "Tipperary" 
float  over  the  channel  from  a  transport  of  un- 
tried British  lads.  The  Belgians  are  a  race  of 
children  whose  feelings  have  been  hurt.  The 
pathos  of  the  Belgian  army  is  like  the  pathos  of 
an  orphan-asylum :  it  is  unconscious. 

They  are  very  lonely,  the  loneliest  men  I  have 
known.  Back  of  the  fighting  Frenchman,  you 
sense  the  gardens  and  fields  of  France,  the  strong, 
victorious  national  will.  In  a  year,  in  two  years, 
having  made  his  peace  with  honor,  he  will  return 
to  a  happiness  richer  than  any  that  France  has 
known  in  fifty  years.  And  the  Englishman  car- 
ries with  him  to  the  stresses  of  the  first  line  an 
unbroken  calm  which  he  has  inherited  from  a 
thousand  years  of  his  island  peace.  His  little 
moment  of  pain  and  death  cannot  trouble  that 
consciousness  of  the  eternal  process  in  which  his 
people  have  been  permitted  to  play  a  continu- 

137 


GOLDEN  LADS 

ing  part.  For  him  the  present  turmoil  is  only  a 
ripple  on  the  vast  sea  of  his  racial  history.  Be- 
hind the  Tommy  is  his  Devonshire  village,  still  se- 
cure. His  mother  and  his  wife  are  waiting  for 
him,  unmolested,  as  when  he  left  them.  But  the 
Belgian,  schooled  in  horror,  faces  a  fuller  horror 
yet  when  the  guns  of  his  friends  are  put  on  his 
bell-towers  and  birthplace,  held  by  the  invaders. 

"My  father  and  mother  are  inside  the  enemy 
lines,"  said  a  Belgian  officer  to  me  as  we  were 
talking  of  the  final  victory.  That  is  the  ever- 
present  thought  of  an  army  of  boys  whose  parents 
are  living  in  doomed  houses  back  of  German 
trenches.  It  is  louder  than  the  near  guns,  the 
noise  of  the  guns  to  come  that  will  tear  at  Bruges 
and  level  the  Tower  of  St.  Nicholas.  That  is 
what  the  future  holds  for  the  Belgian.  He  is 
only  at  the  beginning  of  his  loss.  The  victory  of 
his  cause  is  the  death  of  his  people.  It  is  a  sacri- 
fice almost  without  a  parallel. 

And  now  a  famous  newspaper  correspondent 
has  returned  to  us  from  his  motor  trips  to  the 
front  and  his  conversations  with  officers  to  tell 
us  that  he  does  not  highly  regard  the  fighting  qual- 

138 


A   BELGIAN  BOY   SOLDIER    IN   THE    UNIFORM   OF  THE 

FIRST    ARMY    WHICH    SERVED    AT    LIEGE 

AND  NAMUR. 

it.?"  Jhe  Sllrnmer  °f  ^JS  this  costume  was  exchanged  for 
khaki  (see  pasje  148).  The  present  Belgian  Army  is  largely 
made  up  of  boys  like  this. 


"CHANTONS,  BELGES!     CHANTONS!" 

ities  of  the  Belgians.  I  think  that  statement  is 
not  the  full  truth,  and  I  do  not  think  it  will  be 
the  estimate  of  history  on  the  resistance  of  the 
Belgians.  If  the  resistance  had  been  regarded  by 
the  Germans  as  half-hearted,  I  do  not  believe 
their  reprisals  on  villages  and  towns  and  on  the 
civilian  population  would  have  been  so  bitter. 
The  burning  and  the  murder  that  I  saw  them  com- 
mit throughout  the  month  of  September,  1914, 
was  the  answer  to  a  resistance  unexpectedly  firm 
and  telling.  At  a  skirmish  in  September,  when 
fifteen  hundred  Belgians  stood  off  three  thousand 
Germans  for  several  hours,  I  counted  more  dead 
Germans  than  dead  Belgians.  The  German  offi- 
cer in  whose  hands  we  were  as  captives  asked  us 
with  great  particularity  as  to  how  many  Belgians 
he  had  killed  and  wounded.  While  he  was  talk- 
ing with  us,  his  stretcher-bearers  were  moving  up 
and  down  the  road  for  his  own  casualties.  At 
Alost  the  street  fighting  by  Belgian  troops  behind 
fish-barrels,  with  sods  of  earth  for  barricade,  was 
so  stubborn  that  the  Germans  felt  it  to  be  nec- 
essary to  mutilate  civilian  men,  women,  and  chil- 
dren with  the  bayonet  to  express  in  terms  at  all 

141 


GOLDEN  LADS 

adequate  their  resentment.  I  am  of  course  speak- 
ing of  what  I  know.  Around  Termonde,  three 
times  in  September,  the  fighting  of  Belgians  was 
vigorous  enough  to  induce  the  Germans  on  enter- 
ing the  town  to  burn  more  than  eleven  hundred 
homes,  house  by  house.  If  the  Germans  through- 
out their  army  had  not  possessed  a  high  opinion 
of  Belgian  bravery  and  power  of  retardation,  I 
doubt  if  they  would  have  released  so  wide-spread 
and  unique  a  savagery. 

At  Termonde,  Alost,  Baliere,  and  a  dozen 
other  points  in  the  Ghent  sector,  and,  later,  at 
Dixmude,  Ramscappelle,  Pervyse,  Caeskerke,  and 
the  rest  of  the  line  of  the  Yser,  my  sight  of 
Belgians  has  been  that  of  troops  as  gallant  as 
any.  The  cowards  have  been  occasional,  the 
brave  men  many.  I  still  have  flashes  of  them  as 
when  I  knew  them.  I  saw  a  Belgian  officer  ride 
across  a  field  within  rifle  range  of  the  enemy  to 
point  out  to  us  a  market-cart  in  which  lay  three 
wounded.  On  his  horse,  he  was  a  high  figure, 
well  silhouetted.  Another  day,  I  met  a  Belgian 
sergeant,  with  a  tousled  red  head  of  hair,  and  with 
three  medals  for  valor  on  his  left  breast.  He  kept 

142 


"CHANTONS,  BELGES!     CHANTONS!" 

going  out  into  the  middle  of  the  road  during  the 
times  when  Germans  were  reported  approaching, 
keeping  his  men  under  cover.  If  there  was  risk 
to  be  taken,  he  wanted  first  chance.  My  friend 
Dr.  van  der  Ghinst,  of  Cabour  Hospital,  cap- 
tain in  the  Belgian  army,  remained  three  days  in 
Dixmude  under  steady  bombardment,  caring  un- 
aided for  his  wounded  in  the  Hospital  of  St.  Jean, 
just  at  the  Yser,  and  finally  brought  out  thirty 
old  men  and  women  who  had  been  frightened  into 
helplessness  by  the  flames  and  noise.  Because  he 
was  needed  in  that  direction,  I  saw  him  continue 
his  walk  past  the  point  where  fifty  feet  ahead  of 
him  a  shell  had  just  exploded.  I  watched  him 
walk  erect  where  even  the  renowned  fighting  men 
of  an  allied  race  were  stooping  and  hiding,  be- 
cause he  held  his  life  as  nothing  when  there  were 
wounded  to  be  rescued.  I  saw  Lieutenant  Robert 
de  Broqueville,  son  of  the  prime  minister  of  Bel- 
gium, go  into  Dixmude  on  the  afternoon  when  the 
town  was  leveled  by  German  guns.  He  remained 
there  under  one  of  the  heaviest  bombardments  of 
the  war  for  three  hours,  picking  up  the  wounded 
who  lay  on  curbs  and  in  cellars  and  under  debris. 

H3 


GOLDEN  LADS 

The  troops  had  been  ordered  to  evacuate  the  town, 
and  it  was  a  lonely  job  that  this  youngster  of 
twenty-seven  years  carried  on  through  that  day. 

I  have  seen  the  Belgians  every  day  for  several 
months.  I  have  seen  several  skirmishes  and  bat- 
tles and  many  days  of  shell-fire,  and  the  im- 
pression of  watching  many  thousand  Belgians  in 
action  is  that  of  excellent  fighting  qualities,  starred 
with  bits  of  sheer  daring  as  astonishing  as  that  of 
the  other  races.  With  no  country  left  to  fight 
for,  homes  either  in  ruin  or  soon  to  be  shelled, 
relatives  under  an  alien  rule,  the  home  Govern- 
ment on  a  foreign  soil,  still  this,  second  army,  the 
first  having  been  killed,  fights  on  in  good  spirit. 
Every  morning  of  the  summer  I  have  passed  boys 
between  eighteen  and  twenty-five,  clad  in  fresh 
khaki,  as  they  go  riding  down  the  poplar  lane  from 
La  Panne  to  the  trenches,  the  first  twenty  with 
bright  silver  bugles,  their  cheeks  puffed  and  red 
with  the  blowing.  Twelve  months  of  wounds  and 
wastage,  wet  trenches  and  tinned  food,  and  still 
they  go  out  with  hope. 

And  the  helpers  of  the  army  have  shown  good 
heart.  Breaking  the  silence  of  Rome,  the  splen- 

144 


"CHANTONS,  BELGES!     CHANTONS!" 

did  priesthood  of  Belgium,  from  the  cardinal  to 
the  humblest  cure,  has  played  the  man.  On  the 
front  line  near  Pervyse,  where  my  wife  lived  for 
three  months,  a  soldier-monk  has  remained 
through  the  daily  shell-fire  to  take  artillery  obser- 
vations and  to  comfort  the  fighting  men.  Just 
before  leaving  Flanders,  I  called  on  the  sisters  in 
the  convent  school  of  Fumes.  They  were  still 
cheery  and  busy  in  their  care  of  sick  and  wounded 
civilians.  Every  few  days  the  Germans  shell  the 
town  from  seven  miles  away,  but  the  sisters  will 
continue  there  through  the  coming  months  as 
through  the  last  year.  The  spirit  of  the  best  of 
the  race  is  spoken  in  what  King  Albert  said  re- 
cently in  an  unpublished  conversation  to  the  gen- 
tlemen of  the  English  mission : 

"The  English  will  cease  fighting  before  the  Bel- 
gians. If  there  is  talk  of  yielding,  it  will  come 
from  the  English,  not  from  us." 

That  was  a  playful  way  of  saying  that  there 
will  be  no  yielding  by  any  of  the  Western  Allies. 
The  truth  is  still  as  true  as  it  was  at  Liege  that 
the  Belgians  held  up  the  enemy  till  France  was 
ready  to  receive  them.  And  the  price  Belgium 

H7 


GOLDEN  LADS 

paid  for  that  resistance  was  the  massacre  of 
women  and  children  and  the  house-to-house  burn- 
ing of  homes. 

Since  rendering  that  service  for  all  time  to 
France  and  England,  through  twenty  months  of 
such  a  life  as  exiles  know,  the  Belgians  have 
fought  on  doggedly,  recovering  from  the  misery 
of  the  Antwerp  retreat,  and  showing  a  resilience 
of  spirit  equaled  only  by  the  Fusiliers  Marins  of 
France.  One  afternoon  in  late  June  my  friend 
Robert  Toms  was  sitting  on  the  beach  at  La 
Panne,  watching  the  soldiers  swimming  in  the 
channel.  Suddenly  he  called  to  me,  and  aimed 
his  camera.  There  on  the  sand  in  the  sunlight 
the  Belgian  army  was  changing  its  clothes.  The 
faithful  suits  of  blue,  rained  on  and  trench-worn, 
were  being  tossed  into  great  heaps  on  the  beach 
and  brand-new  yellow  khaki,  clothes  and  cap,  was 
buckled  on.  It  was  a  transformation.  We  had 
learned  to  know  that  army,  and  their  uniform  had 
grown  familiar  and  pleasant  to  us.  The  dirt, 
ground  in  till  it  became  part  of  the  texture;  the 
worn  cloth,  shapeless,  but  yet  molded  to  the  man 
by  long  association — all  was  an  expression  of  the 

148 


"CHANTONS,  BELGES!     CHANTONS!" 

stocky  little  soldier  inside.  The  new  khaki  hung 
slack.  Caps  were  overlarge  for  Flemish  heads. 
To  us,  watching  the  change,  it  was  the  loss  of  the 
last  possession  that  connected  them  with  their 
past;  with  homes  and  country  gone,  now  the  very 
clothing  that  had  covered  them  through  famous 
fights  was  shuffled  off.  It  was  as  if  the  Belgian 
army  had  been  swallowed  up  in  the  sea  at  our 
feet,  like  Pharaoh's  phalanx,  and  up  from  the 
beach  to  the  barracks  scuffled  an  imitation  English 
corps. 

We  went  about  miserable  for  a  few  days.  But 
not  they.  They  spattered  their  limp,  ill-fitting 
garments  with  jest,  and  soon  they  had  produced 
a  poem  in  praise  of  the  change.  These  are  the 
verses  which  a  Belgian  soldier,  clad  in  his  fresh 
yellow,  sang  to  us  as  we  grouped  around  him  on 
a  sand  dune : 

EN  KHAKI 

i 

Depuis  onze  mois  que  nous  sommes  partis  en  guerre, 
A  tous  les  militaires, 
On  a  decide  de  plaire. 
149 


GOLDEN  LADS 

Aussi  depuis  ce  temps  la,  a  1'intendance  c'est  dit, 

De  nous  mettr'  tous  en  khaki. 

Maint'nant  voila  1'beau  temps  qui  vient  d'  paraitre 
Aussi  repetons  tous  le  coeur  en  fete. 

REFRAIN 

Regardez  nos  p'tits  soldats, 
Us  ont  1'air  d'etre  un  peu  la, 

Habilles 

D'la  tete  jusqu'aux  pieds 
En  khaki,  en  khaki, 
Us  sont  contents  de  servir, 
Mais  non  pas  de  mourir, 
Et  cela  c'est  parce  qu'  on  leur  a  mis, 
En  quelque  sorte,  la  t'nue  khaki. 

II 

Maintenant  sur  toutes  les  grand's  routes  vous  pouvez  voir 
Parcourant  les  trottoirs 
Du  matin  jusqu'au  soir 

Les  defenseurs  Beiges,  portant  tous  la  meme  tenue 
Depuis  que  1'ancienne  a  disparue, 
Aussi  quand  on  voit  l'9e  denier 
C'  n'est  plus  regiment  des  panaches. 
Meme  Refrain. 

in 

Nous  sommes  tous  heureux  d'avoir  le  costume  des  Anglais 
Seul'ment  ce  qu'il  fallait, 
Pour  que  c,a  soit  complet. 
150 


"CHANTONS,  BELGES!     CHANTONS!" 

Et  je  suis  certain  si  1'armee  veut  nous  mettre  a  1'aisc 

C'est  d'nous  donner  la  solde  Anglaise. 
Le  jour  qu'nous  aurions  ga,  ah!  quell'  affaire 
Nous  n'  seripns  plus  jamais  dans  la  misere. 

REFRAIN 

Vous  les  verriez  nos  p'tits  soldats, 

J'vous  assure  qu'ils   seraient  un  peu  la, 

Habilles, 
D'la  tete  jusqu'aux  pieds, 

En  khaki,  en  khaki, 
Us  seraient  ners  de  repartir, 

Pour  le  front  avec  plaisir, 
Si  les  quatre  poches  etaient  bien  games 
De  billets  bleus  couleur  khaki. 


FLIES:  A  FANTASY 

OUTSIDE  the  window  stretched  the  village 
street,  flat,  with  bits  of  dust  and  dung  ris- 
ing on  the  breaths  of  wind  and  volleying  into 
rooms  upon  the  tablecloth  and  into  pages  of 
books.  It  was  a  street  of  small  yellow  brick 
houses,  a  shapeless  church,  a  convent  school — 
freckled  buildings,  dingy.  Up  and  down  the 
length  of  it,  it  was  without  one  touch  of  beauty. 
It  gave  back  dust  in  the  eyes.  It  sounded  with 
thunder  of  transports,  rattle  of  wagons,  soft  whirr 
of  officers'  speed  cars,  yelp  of  motor  horns,  and 
the  tap-tap  of  wooden  shoes  on  tiny  peasants,  boys 
and  girls.  A  little  sick  black  dog  slunk  down  the 
pavement,  smelling  and  staring.  A  cart  bumped 
over  the  cobbles,  the  horse  with  a  great  tumor  in 
its  stomach,  the  stomach  as  if  blown  out  on  the 
left  side,  and  the  tumor  with  a  rag  upon  it  where 
it  touched  the  harness. 

Inside   the    window,    a   square    room    with   a 
152 


FLIES:    A  FANTASY 

litter  of  six-penny  novels  in  a  corner,  fifty  or  sixty 
books  flung  haphazard,  some  of  them  open  with 
the  leaves  crushed  back  by  the  books  above.  In 
another  corner,  a  heap  of  commissariat  stuff,  tins 
of  bully  beef,  rabbit,  sardines,  herring,  and  glasses 
of  jam,  and  marmalade.  On  the  center  table,  a 
large  jug  of  marmalade,  ants  busy  in  the  yellow 
trickle  at  the  rim.  Filth  had  worked  its  way  into 
the  red  table-cover.  Filth  was  on  every  object 
in  the  room,  like  a  soft  mist,  blurring  the  color 
and  outlines  of  things.  In  the  corners,  under 
books  and  tins,  insects  moved,  long,  thin,  crawl- 
ing. A  hot  noon  sun  came  dimly  through  the 
dirty  glass  of  the  closed  window,  and  slowly 
baked  a  sleeping  man  in  the  large  plush  arm- 
chair. Around  the  chair,  as  if  it  were  a  promon- 
tory in  a  heaving  sea,  were  billows  of  stale 
crumpled  newspapers,  some  wadded  into  a  ball, 
others  torn  across  the  page,  all  flung  aside  in 
ennui. 

The  face  of  the  man  was  weary  and  weak.  It 
showed  all  of  his  forty-one  years,  and  revealed, 
too,  a  great  emptiness.  Flies  kept  rising  and  set- 
tling again  on  the  hands,  the  face,  and  the  head 

153 


GOLDEN  LADS 

of  the  man — moist  flies  whose  feet  felt  damp  on 
the  skin.  They  were  slow  and  languid  flies 
which  wanted  to  settle  and  stay.  It  was  his 
breathing  that  made  them  restless,  but  not  enough 
to  clear  them  away,  only  enough  to  make  a  low 
buzzing  in  the  sultry  room.  Across  the  top  of 
his  head  a  bald  streak  ran  from  the  forehead,  and 
it  was  here  they  returned  to  alight,  after  each 
twitching  and  heave  of  the  sunken  body. 

In  the  early  months  he  had  fought  a  losing  fight 
with  them.  The  walls  and  ceiling  and  panes  of 
glass  were  spotted  with  the  marks  of  his  long 
battle.  But  his  foes  had  advanced  in  ever-fresh 
force,  clouds  and  swarms  of  them  beyond  num- 
ber. He  had  gone  to  meet  them  with  a  wire- 
killer,  and  tightly  rolled  newspapers.  He  had 
imported  fly  paper  from  Dunkirk.  But  they 
could  afford  to  sacrifice  the  few  hundreds,  which 
his  strokes  could  reach,  and  still  overwhelm  him. 
Lately,  he  had  given  up  the  struggle,  and  let  them 
take  possession  of  the  room.  They  harassed  him 
when  he  read,  so  he  gave  up  reading.  They  got 
into  the  food,  so  he  ate  less.  Between  his  two 
trips  to  the  front  daily  at  8  A.M.  and  2  P.M.,  he 

154 


FLIES:    A  FANTASY 

slept.  He  found  he  could  lose  himself  in  sleep. 
Into  that  kingdom  of  sleep,  they  could  not  enter. 
As  the  weeks  rolled  on,  he  was  able  to  let  him- 
self down  more  and  more  easily  into  silence. 
That  became  his  life.  A  slothfulness,  a  languor, 
even  when  awake,  a  half-conscious  forcing  of  him- 
self through  the  routine  work,  a  looking  forward 
to  the  droning  room,  and  then  the  settling  deep 
into  the  old  plush  chair,  and  the  blessed  uncon- 
sciousness. 

He  drove  a  Red  Cross  ambulance  to  the 
French  lines  at  Nieuport,  collected  the  sick  and 
wounded  soldiers  and  brought  them  to  the  Poste 
de  Secours,  two  miles  back  of  the  trenches.  He 
lived  a  hundred  feet  from  the  Poste,  always 
within  call.  But  the  emergency  call  rarely  came. 
There  were  only  the  set  runs,  for  the  war  had 
settled  to  its  own  regularity.  A  wonderful  idle- 
ness hung  over  the  lines,  where  millions  of  men 
were  unemployed,  waiting  with  strange  patience 
for  some  unseen  event.  Only  the  year  before, 
these  men  were  chatting  in  cafes,  and  busy  in  a 
thousand  ways.  Now,  the  long  hours  of  the  day 
were  lived  without  activity  in  thoughtless  routine. 

155 


GOLDEN  LADS 

Under  the  routine  there  was  always  the  sense  of 
waiting  for  a  sudden  crash  and  horror. 

The  man  was  an  English  gentleman.  It  was 
his  own  car  he  had  brought,  paid  for  by  him,  and 
he  had  offered  his  car  and  services  to  the  Fusiliers 
Marins.  They  had  been  glad  of  his  help,  and  for 
twelve  months  he  had  performed  his  daily  duty 
and  returned  to  his  loneliness.  The  men  under 
whom  he  worked  were  the  French  doctors  of  the 
Poste — the  chief  doctor,  Monsieur  Claude-Marie 
Le  Bot,  with  four  stripes  on  his  arm,  and  the 
courteous,  grave  administrator,  Eustache-Emman- 
uel  Couillandre,  a  three-stripes  man,  and  a  half 
dozen  others,  of  three  stripes  and  two.  They  had 
welcomed  him  to  their  group  when  he  came  to 
them  from  London.  They  had  found  him  lively 
and  likable,  bringing  gossip  of  the  West  End  with 
a  dash  of  Leicester  Square.  Then  slowly  a 
change  had  come  on  him.  He  went  moody  and 
silent. 

"What's  the  matter  with  you1?"  asked  Doctor 
Le  Bot  one  day. 

"Nothing 's  the  matter  with  me,"  answered  the 
man.  "It 's  war  that 's  the  matter." 

156 


FLIES:    A  FANTASY 

"What  do  you  mean  by  that*?"  put  in  one  of 
the  younger  doctors. 

"The  trouble  with  war,"  began  the  man  slowly, 
"is  n't  that  there  's  danger  and  death.  They  are 
easy.  The  trouble  with  war  is  this.  It 's  dull, 
damned  deadly  dull.  It's  the  slowest  thing  in 
the  world.  It  wears  away  at  your  mind,  like 
water  dripping  on  a  rock.  The  old  Indian  tor- 
ture of  letting  water  fall  on  your  skull,  drop  by 
drop,  till  you  went  raving  crazy,  is  nothing  to 
what  war  does  to  the  mind  of  millions  of  men. 
They  can't  think  of  anything  else  but  war,  and 
they  have  no  thoughts  about  that.  They  can't 
talk  of  another  blessed  thing,  and  the  result  is  they 
have  nothing  to  say  at  all." 

As  he  talked  a  flush  came  into  his  face.  He 
gathered  speed,  while  he  spoke,  till  his  words  came 
with  a  rush,  as  if  he  were  relieving  himself  of 
inner  pain. 

"Have  you  ever  heard  the  true  inside  account 
of  an  Arctic  expediton*?"  he  went  on.  "There's 
a  handful  of  men  locked  up  inside  a  little  ship 
for  thirteen  or  fourteen  months.  Nothing  to  look 
out  on  but  snow  and  ice,  one  color  and  a  horizon- 

157 


GOLDEN  LADS 

ful  of  it.  Nothing  to  dream  of  but  arriving  at  a 
Pole — and  that  is  a  theoretical  point  in  infinite 
space.  There 's  no  such  thing.  The  midnight 
sun  and  the  frozen  stuff  get  on  their  nerves — 
same  old  sun  in  the  same  old  place,  same  kind  of 
weather.  What  happens4?  The  natural  thing, 
of  course.  They  get  so  they  hate  each  other  like 
poison.  They  go  around  with  a  mad  on.  They 
carry  hate  against  the  commander  and  the  cook 
and  the  fellow  whose  berth  creaks  every  time  he 
shifts.  Each  man  thinks  the  shipload  is  the  rot- 
tenest  gang  ever  thrown  together.  He  wonders 
why  they  did  n't  bring  somebody  decent  along. 
He  gets  to  scoring  up  grudges  against  the  different 
people,  and  waits  his  chance  to  get  back." 

He  stopped  a  minute,  and  looked  around  at  the 
doctors,  who  were  giving  him  close  attention. 
Then  he  went  on  with  the  same  intensity. 

"Now  that 's  war,  only  war  is  more  so.  Here 
you  are  in  one  place  for  sixteen  months.  You 
shovel  yourself  into  a  stinking  hole  in  the  ground. 
At  seven  in  the  morning,  you  boil  yourself  some 
muddy  coffee  that  tastes  like  the  River  Thames 
at  Battersea  Bridge.  You  take  a  knife  that 's  had 

158 


FLIES:    A  FANTASY 

knicks  hacked  out  of  it,  and  cut  a  hunk  of  dry 
bread  that  chews  like  sand.  You  eat  some  'bully 
beef  out  of  a  tin,  same  tinned  stuff  as  you  've 
been  eating  ever  since  your  stomach  went  on  strike 
a  year  ago.  Once  a  week  for  a  treat,  you  cut  a 
steak  off  the  flank  of  a  dead  horse.  That  tastes 
better,  because  it 's  fresh  meat.  When  you  're 
sent  back  a  few  miles,  en  'piquet,  you  sleep  in  a 
village  that  looks  like  Sodom  after  the  sulphur 
struck  it.  Houses  singed  and  tumbled,  dead 
bodies  in  the  ruins,  a  broken-legged  dog,  trailing 
its  hind  foot,  in  front  of  the  house  where  you 
are.  Tobacco — surely.  You  'd  die  if  you  did  n't 
have  a  smoke.  But  the  rotten  little  cigarettes 
with  no  taste  to  them  that  smoke  like  chopped 
hay.  And  the  cigars  made  out  of  rags  and 
shredded  toothpicks — " 

"Here,  have  a  cigarette,"  suggested  the  young- 
est doctor. 

But  the  man  was  too  busy  in  working  out  his 
own  thoughts. 

"The  whole  thing,"  he  continued,  "is  a  mix- 
ture of  a  morgue  and  a  hospital — only  those 
places  have  running  water,  and  people  in  white 

159 


GOLDEN  LADS 

aprons  to  tidy  things  up.  And  a  battle — 
Three  days  under  bombardment,  living  in  the  cel- 
lar. The  guns  going  off  five,  six  times  to  the  min- 
ute, and  then  waiting  a  couple  of  hours  and  drop- 
ping one  in,  next  door.  The  crumpling  noise 
when  a  little  brick  house  caves  in,  like  a  man 
when  you  hit  him  in  the  stomach,  just  going  all 
together  in  a  heap.  And  the  sick  smell  that  comes 
out  of  the  mess  from  plaster  and  brick  dust. 

"And  getting  wounded,  that's  jolly,  isn't  it*? 
Rifle  ball  through  your  left  biceps.  Dick  walks 
you  back  to  the  dressing  station.  Doctor  busy 
at  luncheon  with  a  couple  of  visiting  officers.  Lie 
down  in  the  straw.  Straw  has  a  pleasant  smell 
when  it  's  smeared  with  iodine  and  blood.  Wait 
till  the  doctor  has  had  his  bottle  of  wine. 

"  'Nothing  very  much,'  he  says,  when  he  gets 
around  to  you.  Drops  some  juice  in,  ties  the 
white  rag  around,  and  you  go  back  to  your  straw. 
Three,  four  hours,  and  along  come  the  body  snatch- 
ers — the  chauffeur  chap  does  n't  know  how  to 
drive,  bumps  into  every  shell  hole  for  seven  miles. 
Every  half  mile,  drive  down  into  the  ditch  mud, 
to  get  out  of  the  way  of  some  ammunition  wagons 

160 


FLIES:    A  FANTASY 

going  to  the  front.  The  wheel  gets  stuck.  Put 
on  power,  in  jumps,  to  bump  the  car  out.  Every 
jerk  tears  at  your  open  sore,  as  if  the  wheel  had 
got  stuck  in  your  arm  and  was  being  pulled  out. 
Two  hours  to  do  the  seven  miles.  Get  to  the 
field  hospital.  No  time  for  you.  Lie  on  your 
stretcher  in  the  court,  where  the  flies  swarm  on 
you.  Always  flies.  Flies  on  the  blood  of  the 
wounded,  glued  to  the  bandage.  Flies  on  the  face 
of  the  dead." 

So  he  had  once  spoken  and  left  them  wonder- 
ing. But  that  whirling  burst  of  words  was  long 
before,  in  those  earlier  days  of  his  work.  Noth- 
ing like  that  had  happened  in  weeks.  No  such 
vivid  pictures  lighted  him  now.  The  man  slept 
on. 

There  was  a  scratching  at  the  window,  then  a 
steady  tapping,  then  a  resounding  fist  on  the  case- 
ment. Gradually,  the  sleeping  man  came  up 
through  the  deep  waters  of  unconsciousness.  His 
eyes  were  heavy.  He  sat  a  moment,  brooding, 
then  turned  toward  the  insistent  noise. 

"Monsieur  Watts!"  said  a  voice. 

"Yes,"  answered  the  man.  He  stretched  him- 
161 


GOLDEN  LADS 

self,  and  raised  the  sash.     A  brisk  little  French 
Marin  was  at  the  window. 

"The  doctors  are  at  luncheon.  They  are  wait- 
ing for  you,"  the  soldier  said  in  rapid  Breton 
French;  "to-day  you  are  their  guest." 

"Of  course,"  replied  the  man,  "I  had  forgotten. 
I  will  come  at  once." 

He  stretched  his  arms  over  his  head — a  tall 
figure  of  a  man,  but  bent  at  the  shoulders,  as  if 
all  the  dreariness  of  his  surroundings  had  settled 
there.  He  had  the  stoop  of  an  old  man,  and  the 
walk.  He  stepped  out  of  his  room,  into  the 
street,  and  stood  a  moment  in  the  midday  sun- 
shine, blinking.  Then  he  walked  down  the  vil- 
lage street  to  the  Poste,  and  pushed  through  the 
dressing-rooms  to  the  dining-room  at  the  rear. 
The  doctors  looked  up  as  he  entered.  He  nodded, 
but  gave  no  speech  back  for  their  courteous,  their 
cordial  greeting.  In  silence  he  ate  the  simple  rel- 
ishes of  sardines  and  olives.  Then  the  treat  of 
the  luncheon  was  brought  in  by  the  orderly.  It 
was  a  duckling,  taken  from  a  refugee  farm,  and 
done  to  a  brown  crisp.  The  head  doctor  carved 
and  served  it. 

162 


FLIES:    A  FANTASY 

"See  here,"  said  Watts  loudly.  He  lifted  his 
wing  of  the  duckling  where  a  dead  fly  was  cooked 
in  with  the  gravy.  He  pushed  his  chair  back.  It 
grated  shrilly  on  the  stone  floor.  He  rose. 

"Flies,"  he  said,  and  left  the  room. 


Watts  was  the  guest  at  the  informal  trench 
luncheon.  The  officers  showed  him  little  favors 
from  time  to  time,  for  he  had  served  their  wounded 
faithfully  for  many  months.  It  is  the  highest 
honor  they  can  pay  when  they  admit  a  civilian  to 
the  first  line  of  trenches.  Shelling  from  Westend 
was  mild  and  inaccurate,  going  high  overhead 
and  falling  with  a  mutter  into  the  seven-times 
wrecked  and  thoroughly  deserted  houses  of  Nieu- 
port  village.  But  the  sound  of  it  gave  a  gentle 
tingle  to  the  act  of  eating.  There  was  occasional 
rifle  fire,  the  bullet  singing  close. 

"They  're  improving,"  said  the  Commandant, 
"a  fellow  reached  over  the  trench  this  morning 
for  his  Billy-can,  and  they  got  him  in  the  hand." 

Two  Marins  cleared  away  the  plank  on  which 
bread  and  coffee  and  tinned  meat  had  been  served. 

163 


GOLDEN  LADS 

The  hot  August  sun  cooked  the  loose  earth,  and 
heightened  the  smells  of  food.  A  swarm  of  flies 
poured  over  the  outer  rim  and  dropped  down  on 
squatting  men  and  the  scattered  commissariat. 
Watts  was  sitting  at  a  little  distance  from  the 
group.  He  closed  his  eyes,  but  soon  began  strik- 
ing methodically  at  the  settling  flies.  He  fought 
them  with  the  right  arm  and  the  left  in  long 
heavy  strokes,  patiently,  without  enthusiasm. 
The  soldiers  brought  out  a  pack  of  cards,  and 
leaned  forward  for  the  deal.  Suddenly  Watts 
rose,  lifted  his  arms  above  the  trench,  and  delib- 
erately stretched.  Three  faint  cracks  sounded 
from  across  the  hillock,  and  he  tumbled  out  at 
full  length,  as  if  some  one  had  flung  him  away. 
The  men  hastened  to  him,  coming  crouched  over 
but  swiftly. 

"Got  him  in  the  right  arm,"  said  the  Com- 
mandant. 

"Thank  God,"  muttered  Watts,  sleepily 


It    was    the    Convent    Hospital    of    Fumes. 
There  was  quiet  in  the  ward  of  twenty-five  beds, 

164 


FLIES:    A  FANTASY 

where  side  by  side  slept  the  wounded  of  France 
and  Germany  and  Belgium  and  England.  Sud- 
denly, a  resounding  whack  rang  through  the 
ward.  A  German  boy  jumped  up  sitting  in  his 
cot.  The  sound  had  awakened  memories.  He 
looked  over  to  the  tall  Englishman  in  the  next  cot, 
who  had  struck  out  at  one  of  the  heavy  innumer- 
able flies,  who  hover  over  wounded  men,  and  pry 
down  under  bandages. 

"Let  me  tell  you,"  said  the  youth  eagerly,  "I 
have  a  preparation — I  'm  a  chemist,  you  know — 
I  've  worked  out  a  powder  that  kills  flies." 

Watts  looked  up  from  his  pillow.  His  face 
was  weary. 

"It's  sweet,  you  know,  and  attracts  them," 
went  on  the  boy,  "then  the  least  sniff  of  it  finishes 
them.  They  trail  away,  and  die  in  a  few  min- 
utes. You  can  clear  a  room  in  half  an  hour. 
Then  all  you  have  to  do  is  to  sweep  up." 

"See  here,"  he  said,  "I  '11  show  you.  Sister," 
he  called.  The  nurse  hurried  to  his  side. 

"Sister?  You  were  kind  enough  to  save  my 
kit.  May  I  have  it  a  moment1?" 

He  took  out  a  tin  flask,  and  squeezed  it — a 

165 


GOLDEN  LADS 

brown  powder  puffed  through  the  pin-point  holes 
at  the  mouth.  It  settled  in  a  dust  on  the  white 
coverlet. 

'/Please  be  very  quiet,"  he  said.  He  settled 
back,  as  if  for  sleep,  but  his  half -shut  eyes  were 
watchful.  A  couple  of  minutes  passed,  then  a  fly 
circled  his  head,  and  made  for  the  spot  on  the 
spread.  It  nosed  its  way  in,  crawled  heavily  a 
few  inches  up  the  coverlet,  and  turned  its  legs  up. 
Two  more  came,  alighted,  sniffed  and  died. 

"You  see,"  he  said. 


Next  day,  the  head  of  the  Coxyde  Poste  mo- 
tored over  to  Fumes  for  a  call  on  his  wounded 
helper. 

"Where  does  all  that  chatter  come  from?"  he 
asked. 

Sister  Teresa  smiled. 

"It 's  your  silent  friend,"  she  said.  "He  is  the 
noisiest  old  thing  in  the  ward." 

"Talking  to  himself?"  inquired  the  doctor. 

"Have  a  look  for  yourself,"  urged  the  nurse. 
They  stepped  into  the  ward,  and  down  the  stone 

166 


FLIES:    A  FANTASY 

floor,  till  they  came  to  the  supply  table.  Here 
they  pretended  to  busy  themselves  with  lint. 

"Most  interesting,"  Watts  was  saying.  "That 
is  a  new  idea  to  me.  Here  they  've  been  telling 
me  for  a  year  that  there  's  no  way  but  the  slow 
push,  trench  after  trench — " 

"Let  me  say  to  you,"  interrupted  the  Saxon  lad. 

"You  will  pardon  me,  if  I  finish  what  I  am 
saying,"  went  on  Watts  in  full  tidal  flow. 
"What  was  it  I  was  saying*?  Oh,  yes,  I  remem- 
ber— that  slow  hard  push  is  not  the  only  way, 
after  all.  You  tell  me — " 

"That 's  the  way  it  is  all  day  long,"  explained 
the  sister.  "Chatter,  chatter,  chatter.  They  are 
telling  each  other  all  they  know.  You  would 
think  they  would  get  fed  up.  But  as  fast  as  one 
of  them  says  something,  that  seems  to  be  a  new 
idea  to  the  other.  Mr.  Watts  acts  like  a  man  who 
has  been  starved." 

Watts  caught  sight  of  his  friend. 

"We  've  killed  all  the  flies,"  he  shouted. 


167 


WOMEN  UNDER  FIRE 

THIS  war  has  been  a  revelation  of  woman- 
hood. To  see  one  of  these  cool,  friendly 
creatures,  American  and  English,  shove  her  motor 
car  into  shell-fire,  make  her  rescue  of  helpless 
crippled  men,  and  steam  back  to  safety,  is  to 
watch  a  resourceful  and  disciplined  being.  They 
may  be,  they  are,  "ministering  angels,"  but  there 
is  nothing  meek  in  their  demeanor.  They  have 
stepped  to  a  vantage  from  which  nothing  in  man's 
contemptuous  philosophy  will  ever  dislodge  them. 
They  have  always  existed  to  astonish  those  who 
knew  them  best,  and  have  turned  life  into  a  sur- 
prise party  from  Eden  to  the  era  of  forcible  feed- 
ing. But  assuredly  it  would  make  the  dogmatists 
on  the  essentially  feminine  nature,  like  Kipling, 
rub  their  eyes,  to  watch  modern  women  at  work 
under  fire.  They  have  n't  the  slightest  fear  of 
being  killed.  Give  them  a  job  under  bombard- 
ment, and  they  unfold  the  stretcher,  place  the 
pillow  and  tuck  in  the  blanket,  without  a  quiver 

168 


WOMEN  UNDER  FIRE 

of  apprehension.  That,  too,  when  some  of  the 
men  are  scampering  for  cover,  and  ducking 
chance  pellets  from  the  woolly  white  cloud  that 
breaks  overhead.  The  women  will  eat  their 
luncheon  with  relish  within  three  hundred  feet  of 
a  French  battery  in  full  blaze.  Is  there  a  test 
left  to  the  pride  of  man  that  the  modern  woman 
does  not  take  lightly  and  skilfully*?  Gone  are 
the  Victorian  nerves  and  the  eighteenth-century 
fainting.  All  the  old  false  delicacies  have  been 
swamped.  She  has  been  held  back  like  a  hound 
from  the  hunting,  till  we  really  believed  we  had 
a.  harmless  household  pet,  who  loved  security. 
We  had  forgotten  the  pioneer  women  who  struck 
across  frontiers  with  a  hardihood  that  matched 
that  of  their  mates.  And  now  the  modern  woman 
emerges  from  her  protected  home,  and  pushes  for- 
ward, careless  and  curious. 

"What  are  women  going  to  do  about  this 
war?"  That  question  my  wife  and  I  asked 
each  other  at  the  outbreak  of  the  present  con- 
flict. There  were  several  attitudes  that  they 
might  take.  They  could  deplore  war,  because  it 
destroyed  their  own  best  products.  They  could 

169 


GOLDEN  LADS 

form  peace  leagues  and  pass  resolutions  against 
war.  They  could  return  to  their  ancient  job  of 
humble  service,  and  resume  their  familiar  location 
in  the  background.  They  did  all  these  things 
and  did  them  fervently;  but  they  did  something 
else  in  this  war — they  stepped  out  into  the  fore- 
ground, where  the  air  was  thick  with  danger,  and 
demonstrated  their  courage.  The  mother  no 
longer  says:  "Return,  my  gallant  one,  with 
your  shield  or  on  it,"  and  goes  back  to  her  bak- 
ing. She  packs  her  kit  and  jumps  into  a  motor 
ambulance  headed  for  the  dressing  station. 

We  have  had  an  excellent  chance  to  watch 
women  in  this  war.  Our  corps  have  had  access 
to  every  line  from  Nieuport  on  the  sea,  down  for 
twenty  miles.  We  were  able  to  run  out  to  skir- 
mishes, to  reach  the  wounded  where  they  had 
fallen.  We  have  gone  where  the  fighting  had 
been  at  such  close  range  that  in  one  barnyard  in 
Ramscappelle  lay  thirteen  dead — Germans.  French 
and  Belgians.  We  brought  back  three  wounded 
Germans  from  the  stable.  We  were  in  Dixmude 
on  the  afternoon  when  the  Germans  destroyed  the 
town  by  artillery  fire.  We  were  in  Ypres  on  No- 

170 


WOMEN  UNDER  FIRE 

vember  first,  the  day  after  the  most  terrible  battle 
in  history,  when  fifty  thousand  English  out  of  a 
hundred  and  twenty  thousand  fell.  For  three 
months  my  wife  lived  in  Pervyse,  with  two  Brit- 
ish women.  Not  one  house  in  the  town  itself 
is  left  untouched  by  shell-fire.  The  women  lived 
in  a  cellar  for  the  first  weeks.  Then  they  moved 
into  a  partially  demolished  house,  and  a  little 
later  a  shell  exploded  in  the  kitchen.  The  women 
were  at  work  in  the  next  room.  We  have  had 
opportunity  for  observing  women  in  war,  for 
we  have  seen  several  hundred  of  them — nurses, 
helpers,  chauffeurs,  writers — under  varying  de- 
grees of  strain  and  danger. 

The  women  whom  I  met  in  Belgium  were  all 
alike.  They  refused  to  take  "their  place." 
They  were  not  interested  in  their  personal  wel- 
fare. There  have  been  individual  men,  a  few  of 
them — English,  French  and  Belgian,  soldiers, 
chauffeurs  and  civilians — who  have  turned  tail 
when  the  danger  was  acute.  But  the  women  we 
have  watched  are  strangely  lacking  in  fear.  I 
asked  a  famous  war  writer,  whose  breast  was  gay 
with  the  ribbons  of  half  a  dozen  campaigns,  what 

171 


GOLDEN  LADS 

was  the  matter  with  all  these  women,  that  they 
did  not  tremble  and  go  green  under  fire,  as  some 
of  us  did.  He  said: 

"They  don't  belong  out  here.  They  have  no 
business  to  be  under  fire.  They  ought  to  be  back 
at  the  hospitals  down  at  Dunkirk.  They  don't 
appreciate  danger.  That's  the  trouble  with 
them;  they  have  no  imagination." 

That 's  an  easy  way  out.  But  the  real  reasons 
lie  deeper  than  a  mental  inferiority.  These 
women  certainly  had  quite  as  good  an  equipment 
in  mentality  as  the  drivers  and  stretcher  bearers. 
They  could  not  bear  to  let  immense  numbers  of 
men  lie  in  pain.  They  wished  to  bring  their  in- 
stinct for  help  to  the  place  where  it  was  needed. 

The  other  reason  is  a  product  of  their  changed 
thinking  under  modern  conditions.  "I  want  to 
see  the  shells,"  said  a  discontented  lady  at  Dun- 
kirk. She  was  weary  of  the  peace  and  safety 
of  a  town  twenty  miles  back  from  the  front. 
Women  suddenly  saw  their  time  had  come  to  strip 
man  of  one  more  of  his  monopolies.  For  some 
thousand  years  he  had  been  bragging  of  his  car- 
riage and  bearing  in  battle.  He  had  told  the 

172 


WOMEN  UNDER  FIRE 

women  folks  at  home  how  admirable  he  had  been 
under  strain,  and  he  went  on  to  claim  special  priv- 
ileges as  the  reward  for  his  gallant  behavior.  He 
posed  as  their  protector.  He  assumed  the  right  to 
tax  them  because  they  did  not  lend  a  hand  when 
invasion  came.  Now  women  are  campaigning  in 
France  and  Belgium  to  show  that  man's  much-ad- 
vertised quality  of  courage  is  a  race  possession. 

They  had  already  shown  it  while  peace  was 
still  in  the  land,  but  their  demonstration  met  with 
disfavor.  Just  before  the  war  broke  out  I  saw 
a  woman  suffragist  thrown  into  a  pond  of  water 
at  Denmark  Hill.  I  saw  another  mauled  and 
bruised  by  a  crowd  of  men  in  Hyde  Park.  They 
were  the  same  sort  of  women  as  these  hundreds 
at  the  front,  who  are  affirming  a  new  value.  The 
argument  is  hotly  contended  whether  women  be- 
long in  the  war  zone.  Conservative  Englishmen 
deem  them  a  nuisance,  and  wish  them  back  in 
London.  Meanwhile,  they  come  and  stay. 
English  officials  tried  to  send  home  the  three  of 
our  women  who  had  been  nursing  within  thirty 
yards  of  the  trenches  at  Pervyse.  But  the  King 
of  the  Belgians,  and  Baron  de  Broqueville,  prime 

173 


GOLDEN  LADS 

minister  of  Belgium,  had  been  watching  their 
work,  and  refused  to  move  them. 

One  morning  we  came  into  the  dining-room 
of  our  Convent  Hospital  at  Fumes,  and  there  on 
a  stretcher  on  the  floor  was  a  girl  sleeping  pro- 
foundly. We  thought  at  first  we  had  one  more 
of  our  innumerable  wounded  who  overflowed  the 
beds  and  wards  during  those  crowded  days.  She 
rested  through  the  morning  and  through  the  noon 
meal.  The  noise  about  did  not  disturb  her. 
She  did  not  stir  in  her  heavy  sleep,  lying  un- 
der the  window,  her  face  of  olive  skin,  with  a 
touch  of  red  in  the  right  cheek,  turned  away  from 
the  light.  She  awoke  after  twenty  hours.  Si- 
lently, she  had  come  in  the  evening  before,  wearied 
to  exhaustion  after  a  week  of  nursing  in  the  Bel- 
gian trenches. 

That  was  the  thing  you  were  confronted  with 
— woman  after  woman  hurling  herself  at  the  war 
till  spent.  They  wished  to  share  with  men  the 
hardship  and  peril.  If  risks  were  right  for  the 
men,  then  they  were  right  for  women.  If  the 
time  had  come  for  nations  to  risk  death,  these 
women  refused  to  claim  the  exemptions  of  sex 

174 


WOMEN  UNDER  FIRE 

difference.  If  war  was  unavoidable,  then  it  was 
equally  proper  for  women  to  be  present  and  carry 
on  the  work  of  salvage. 

Of  a  desire  to  kill  they  have  none.  A  cer- 
tain type  of  man  under  excitement  likes  to  shoot 
and  reach  his  mark.  I  have  had  soldiers  tell  me 
with  pride  of  the  number  of  enemies  they  have 
potted.  It  sounds  very  much  like  an  Indian 
score-card  of  scalps  or  a  grouse  hunter's  bag  of 
game.  Our  women  did  not  talk  in  these  terms, 
nor  did  they  act  so.  They  gave  the  same  care 
to  German  wounded  as  to  Belgian,  French  and 
English  wounded,  and  that  though  they  knew  they 
would  not  receive  mercy  if  the  enemy  came 
across  the  fields  and  stormed  the  trenches.  A 
couple  of  machine  guns  placed  on  the  trench  at 
Pervyse  could  have  raked  the  ruined  village  and 
killed  our  three  nurses.  They  shared  the  terms 
of  peril  with  the  soldiers;  but  they  had  no  desire 
for  retaliation,  no  wish  to  wreak  their  will  on 
human  life.  Their  instinct  is  to  help.  The  dan- 
ger does  not  excite  them  to  a  nervous  explosion 
where  they  grab  for  a  gun  and  shoot  the  other 
fellow. 

175 


GOLDEN  LADS 

I  was  with  an  English  physician  one  day  be- 
fore he  was  seasoned.  We  were  under  the  bank 
at  Grembergen,  just  across  the  river  from  Ter- 
monde.  The  enemy  were  putting  over  shells 
about  one  hundred  yards  from  where  we  were 
crawling  toward  a  machine-shop  sheltering 
wounded  men.  The  obus  were  noisy  and  the  dirt 
flew  high.  Scattered  bits  of  metal  struck  the 
bank.  As  we  heard  the  shell  moaning  for  that 
second  of  time  when  it  draws  close,  we  would 
crawl  into  one  of  the  trenches  scooped  out  in  the 
green  bank,  an  earthen  cave  with  a  roof  of  boughs. 

"Let 's  get  out  of  this,"  said  the  doctor.  "It 's 
too  hot  for  our  kind  of  work.  If  I  had  a  rifle 
and  could  shoot  back  I  should  n't  mind  it.  But 
this  waiting  round  and  doing  nothing  in  return  till 
you  are  hit,  I  don't  like  it." 

But  that  is  the  very  power  that  women  pos- 
sess. They  can  wait  round  without  wishing  to 
strike  back.  Saving  life  gives  them  sufficient 
spiritual  resource  to  stand  up  to  artillery.  They 
have  no  wish  to  relieve  their  nervousness  by  sight- 
ing an  alien  head  and  cracking  it. 

One  of  our  corps  was  the  daughter  of  an  earl. 
176 


WOMEN  UNDER  FIRE 

She  had  all  the  characteristics  of  what  we  like  to 
think  is  the  typical  American  girl.  She  had  a 
bonhomie  that  swept  class  distinctions  aside. 
Her  talk  was  swift  and  direct.  She  was  pretty 
and  executive,  swift  to  act  and  always  on  the  go. 

One  day,  as  we  were  on  the  road  to  the  dressing 
stations,  the  noise  of  guns  broke  out.  The  young 
Belgian  soldier  who  was  driving  her  stopped  his 
motor  and  jumped  out. 

"I  do  not  care  to  go  farther,"  he  said. 

Lady  ,  who  is  a  skilful  driver,  climbed 

to  the  front  seat,  drove  the  car  to  the  dressing  sta- 
tion and  brought  back  the  wounded.  I  have  seen 
her  drive  a  touring  car,  carrying  six  wounded  men, 
from  Nieuport  to  Furnes  at  eight  o'clock  on  a 
pitch-dark  night,  no  lights  allowed,  over  a  narrow, 
muddy  road  on  which  the  car  skidded.  She  had 
to  thread  her  way  through  silent  marching  troops, 
turn  out  for  artillery  wagons,  follow  after  tired 
horses. 

She  was  not  a  trained  nurse,  but  when  Dr.  Hec- 
tor Munro  was  working  over  a  man  with  a  broken 
leg  she  prepared  a  splint  and  held  the  leg  while 
he  set  it  and  bound  it.  She  drove  a  motor  into 

177 


GOLDEN  LADS 

Nieuport  when  the  troops  were  marching  out  of 
it.  Her  guest  for  the  afternoon  was  a  war  cor- 
respondent. 

"This  is  a  retreat,"  he  said.  "It  is  never  safe 
to  enter  a  place  when  the  troops  are  leaving  it.  I 
have  had  experience." 

"We  are  going  in  to  get  the  wounded,"  she  re- 
plied. They  went  in. 

At  Ypres  she  dodged  round  the  corner  because 
she  saw  a  captain  who  does  n't  believe  in  women 
at  the  front.  A  shell  fell  in  the  place  where  she 
had  been  standing  a  moment  before.  It  blew  the 
arm  from  a  soldier.  Her  nerve  was  unbroken, 
and  she  continued  her  work  through  the  morn- 
ing. 

Her  notion  of  courage  is  that  people  have  a 
right  to  feel  frightened,  but  that  they  have  no 
right  to  fail  to  do  the  job  even  if  they  are  fright- 
ened. They  are  entitled  to  their  feelings,  but 
they  are  not  entitled  to  shirk  the  necessary  work 
of  war.  She  believes  that  cowardice  is  not  like 
other  failings  of  weakness,  which  are  pretty  much 
man's  own  business.  Cowardice  is  dangerous  to 
the  group. 

178 


WOMEN  UNDER  FIRE 

Lady  's  attitude  at  a  bombardment  was 

that  of  a  child  seeing  a  hailstorm — open-eyed 
wonder.  She  was  the  purest  exhibit  of  careless 
fearlessness,  carrying  a  buoyancy  in  danger.  Gen- 
erations of  riding  to  hounds  and  of  big  game  shoot- 
ing had  educated  fear  out  of  her  stock.  Her  an- 
cestors had  always  faced  uncertainty  as  one  of  the 
ingredients  of  life:  they  accepted  danger  in  ac- 
cepting life.  The  savage  accepted  fear  because 
he  had  to.  With  the  English  upper  class,  danger 
is  a  fine  art,  a  cult.  It  is  an  element  in  the  family 
honor.  One  cannot  possibly  shrink  from  the  test. 
The  English  have  expressed  themselves  in  sport. 
People  who  are  good  sportsmen  are,  of  course, 
honorable  fighters.  The  Germans  have  allowed 
their  craving  for  adventure  to  seethe  inside  them- 
selves, and  then  have  aimed  it  seriously  at  human 
life.  But  the  English  have  taken  off  their  excess 
vitality  by  outdoor  contests. 

What  Lady  is  the  rest  of  the  women 

are.  Miss  Smith,  an  English  girl  nurse,  jumped 
down  from  the  ambulance  that  was  retreating 
before  the  Germans,  and  walked  back  into  Ghent, 
held  by  the  Germans,  to  nurse  an  English  officer 

179 


GOLDEN  LADS 

till  he  died.  A  few  days  later  she  escaped,  by 
going  in  a  peasant's  cart  full  of  market  vegetables, 
and  rejoined  us  at  Fumes. 

Sally  Macnaughtan  is  a  gray-haired  gentle- 
woman of  independent  means  who  writes  admir- 
able fiction.  She  has  laid  aside  her  art  and  for 
months  conducted  a  soup  kitchen  in  the  railway 
station  at  Fumes.  She  has  fed  thousands  of 
weakened  wounded  men,  working  till  midnight 
night  after  night.  She  remained  until  the  town 
was  thoroughly  shelled. 

The  order  is  strict  that  no  officer's  wife  must 
be  near  the  front.  The  idea  is  that  she  will  divert 
her  husband's  mind  from  the  work  in  hand.  He 

will  worry  about  her  safety.  But  Mrs.  B ,  a 

Belgian,  joined  our  women  in  Pervyse,  and  did 
useful  work,  while  her  husband,  a  doctor  with  the 
rank  of  officer,  continued  his  work  along  the 
front.  She  is  a  girl  of  twenty-one  years. 

Recently  the  Queen  of  the  Belgians  went  into 
the  trenches  at  a  time  when  there  was  danger  of 
artillery  and  rifle  fire  breaking  loose  from  the 
enemy.  She  had  to  be  besought  to  keep  back 
where  the  air  was  quieter,  as  her  life  was  of  more 

180 


WOMEN  UNDER  FIRE 

value  to  the  Belgian  troops  and  the  nation  than 
even  a  gallant  death. 

One  afternoon  most  of  the  corps  were  out  on 
the  road  searching  for  wounded.  Mairi  Chis- 
holm,  a  Scotch  girl  eighteen  years  old,  and  a  young 
American  woman  had  been  left  behind  in  the 
Furnes  Hospital.  With  them  was  a  stretcher 
bearer,  a  man  of  twenty-eight.  A  few  shells  fell 
into  Furnes.  The  civilian  population  began  run- 
ning in  dismay.  The  girls  climbed  up  into  the 
tower  of  the  convent  to  watch  the  work  of  the 
shells.  The  man  ordered  the  women  to  leave  the 
town  with  him  and  go  to  Poperinghe.  The  two 
girls  refused  to  go. 

For  weeks  Furnes  was  under  artillery  fire  from 
beyond  Nieuport.  One  of  our  hospital  nurses  was 
killed  as  she  was  walking  in  the  Grand  Place. 

I  saw  an  American  girl  covered  by  the  pistol  of 
an  Uhlan  officer.  She  did  not  change  color,  but 
regarded  the  incident  as  a  lark.  I  happened  to  be 
watching  her  when  she  was  sitting  on  the  front 
seat  of  an  ambulance  at  Oudecappelle,  eating 
luncheon.  A  shell  fell  thirty  yards  from  her  in 
the  road.  The  roar  was  loud.  The  dirt  flew 

181 


GOLDEN  LADS 

high.  The  metal  fragments  tinkled  on  the  house 
walls.  The  hole  it  dug  was  three  feet  deep.  She 
laughed  and  continued  with  her  luncheon. 

I  saw  the  same  girl  stand  out  in  a  field  while 
this  little  drama  took  place:  The  French  artil- 
lery in  the  field  were  well  covered  by  shrubbery. 
They  had  been  pounding  away  from  their  covert 
till  the  Germans  grew  irritated.  A  German 
Taube  flew  into  sight,  hovered  high  overhead  and 
spied  the  hidden  guns.  It  dropped  three  smoke 
bombs.  These  puffed  out  their  little  clouds  into 
the  air,  and  gave  the  far-away  marksmen  the 
location  for  firing.  Their  guns  broke  out  and 
shrapnel  shells  came  overhead,  burst  into  trailing 
smoke  and  scattered  their  hundreds  of  bullets. 
The  girl  stood  on  the  arena  itself.  Of  concern 
for  her  personal  safety  she  had  none.  It  was  all 
like  a  play  on  the  stage  to  her.  You  watch  the 
blow  and  flash  but  you  are  not  a  part  of  the  action. 

Each  night  the  Furnes  Hospital  was  full  with 
one  hundred  wounded.  In  the  morning  we  car- 
ried out  one  or  two  or  one-half  dozen  dead.  The 
wounds  were  severe,  the  air  of  the  whole  country- 
side was  septic  from  the  sour  dead  in  the  fields, 

182 


WOMEN  UNDER  FIRE 

who  kept  working  to  the  surface  from  their  shal- 
low burial.  There  was  a  morning  when  we  had 
gone  early  to  the  front  on  a  hurry  call.  In  our 
absence  two  girl  nurses  carried  out  ten  dead  from 
the  wards  into  the  convent  lot,  to  the  edge  of  the 
hasty  graves  made  ready  for  their  coming. 

There  is  one  woman  whom  we  have  watched  at 
work  for  twelve  months.  She  is  a  trained  nurse, 
a  certified  midwife,  a  licensed  motor-car  driver,  a 
veterinarian  and  a  woman  of  property.  Her 
name  is  Mrs.  Elsie  Knocker,  a  widow  with  one 
son.  She  helped  to  organize  our  corps.  I  was 
with  her  one  evening  when  a  corporal  ordered  her 
to  go  up  a  difficult  road.  He  was  the  driver  of  a 
high-power  touring  car  which  could  rise  on  occa- 
sion to  seventy  miles  an  hour.  He  carried  a  rifle 
in  his  car,  and  told  us  he  had  killed  over  fifty 
Germans  since  Liege.  He  dressed  in  bottle  green, 
the  uniform  of  a  cyclist,  and  he  looked  like  a  rol- 
licking woodlander  of  the  Robin  Hood  band.  It 
was  seven  o'clock  of  the  evening.  The  night  was 
dark.  He  pitched  a  bag  of  bandages  into  the 
motor  ambulance. 

'Take  those  to  the  dressing  station  that  lies  two 

183 


GOLDEN  LADS 

miles  to  the  west  of  Caeskerke,"  he  ordered  Mrs. 
Knocker.  I  cranked  up  the  machine;  Mrs. 
Knocker  sat  at  the  wheel.  We  were  at  Oudecap- 
pelle.  The  going  was  halfway  decent  as  far  as 
the  crossroads  of  Caeskerke.  Here  we  turned 
west  on  a  road  through  the  fields  which  had  been 
intermittently  shelled  for  several  days.  The  road 
had  shell  holes  in  it  from  one  to  three  feet  deep. 
We  could  not  see  them  because  we  carried  no 
lights  and  the  sky  overhead  was  black.  A  mile 
to  our  right  a  village  was  burning.  There  were 
sheets  of  flame  rising  from  the  lowland,  and  the 
flame  revealed  the  smoke  that  was  thick  over  the 
ruins.  We  bumped  in  and  out  of  the  holes.  All 
roads  in  Belgium  were  scummy  with  mud.  It  is 
like  butter  on  bread.  The  big  brown-canopied 
ambulance  skidded  in  this  paste. 

We  reached  the  dressing  station  and  delivered 
one  bag  of  bandages.  In  return  we  received 
three  severely  wounded  men,  who  lay  at  length 
on  the  stretched  canvas  and  swung  on  straps. 
Then  we  started  back  over  the  same  mean  road. 
This  was  the  journey  that  tested  Mrs.  Knocker's 

184 


WOMEN  UNDER  FIRE 

driving,  because  now  she  had  helpless  men  who 
must  not  be  jerked  by  the  swaying  car.  Motion 
tore  at  their  wounds.  Above  all,  they  must  not 
be  overturned.  An  overturn  would  kill  a  man 
who  was  seriously  wounded.  Driving  meant 
drawing  all  her  nervous  forces  into  her  directing 
brain  and  her  two  hands.  A  village  on  fire  at 
night  is  an  eerie  sight.  A  dark  road,  pitted  with 
shell  holes  and  slimy  with  mud,  is  chancy.  The 
car  with  its  human  freight,  swaying,  bumping, 
sliding,  is  heavy  on  the  wrist.  The  whole  focused 
drive  of  it  falls  on  the  muscles  of  the  forearm. 
And  when  on  the  skill  of  that  driver  depends 
the  lives  of  three  men  the  situation  is  one  that 
calls  for  nerve.  It  was  only  luck  that  the  artil- 
lery from  beyond  the  Yser  did  not  begin  tuning 
up.  The  Germans  had  shelled  that  road  dili- 
gently for  many  days  and  some  evenings.  Back 
to  the  crossroads  Mrs.  Knocker  brought  her  cargo, 
and  on  to  Oudecappelle,  and  so  to  the  hospital  at 
Fumes,  a  full  ten  miles.  Safely  home  in  the 
convent  yard,  the  journey  done,  the  wounded  men 
lifted  into  the  ward,  she  broke  down.  She  had 

185 


GOLDEN  LADS 

put  over  her  job,  and  her  nerves  were  tired. 
Womanlike  she  refused  to  give  in  till  the  work 
was  successfully  finished. 

How  would  a  man  have  handled  such  a  strain? 
I  will  tell  you  how  one  man  acted.  Our  corporal 
drove  his  touring  car  toward  Dixmude  one  morn- 
ing. He  ordered  Tom,  the  cockney  driver,  to  fol- 
low with  the  motor  ambulance.  In  it  were  Mrs. 
Knocker  and  Miss  Chisholm,  sitting  with  Tom 
on  the  front  of  the  car.  Things  looked  thick. 
The  corporal  slowed  up,  and  so  did  Tom  just 
behind  him.  Now  there  is  one  sure  rule  for  res- 
cue work  at  the  front — when  you  hear  the  guns 
close,  always  turn  your  car  toward  home,  away 
from  the  direction  of  the  enemy.  Turn  it  before 
you  get  your  wounded,  even  though  they  are  at 
the  point  of  death,  and  leave  your  power  on,  even 
when  you  are  going  to  stay  for  a  quarter  of  an 
hour.  Pointed  toward  safety,  and  under  power, 
the  car  can  carry  you  out  of  range  of  a  sudden 
shelling  or  a  bayonet  charge.  The  enemy's  guns 
began  to  place  shrapnel  over  the  road.  The  cloud 
puffs  were  hovering  about  a  hundred  feet  overhead 
a  little  farther  down  the  way.  The  bullets 

186 


WOMEN  UNDER  FIRE 

clicked  on  the  roadbed.  The  corporal  jumped  out 
of  his  touring  car. 

"Turn  my  car,"  he  shouted  to  Tom.  Tom 
climbed  from  the  ambulance,  boarded  the  touring 
car  and  turned  it.  The  corporal  peered  out  from 
his  shelter,  behind  the  ambulance,  saw  the  going 
was  good  and  ran  to  his  own  motor.  He  jumped 
in  and  sped  out  of  range  at  full  tilt.  The  two 
women  sat  quietly  in  the  ambulance,  watching  the 
shrapnel.  Tom  came  to  them,  turned  the  car 
and  brought  them  beyond  the  range  of  fire. 

But  the  steadiest  and  most  useful  piece  of  work 
done  by  the  women  was  that  at  Pervyse.  Mrs. 
Knocker  and  two  women  helpers,  one  Scotch  and 
one  American,  fitted  up  a  miniature  hospital  in 
the  cellar  of  a  house  in  ruined  Pervyse.  They 
were  within  three  minutes  of  the  trenches.  Here, 
as  soon  as  the  soldiers  were  wounded,  they  could 
be  brought  for  immediate  treatment.  A  young 
private  had  received  a  severe  lip  wound.  Un- 
skilful army  medical  handling  had  left  it  gan- 
grened, and  it  had  swollen.  His  face  was  on 
the  way  to  being  marred  for  life.  Mrs.  Knocker 
treated  him  every  few  hours  for  ten  days — and 

189 


GOLDEN  LADS 

brought  him  back  to  normal.  A  man  came  in 
with  his  hand  a  pulp  from  splintered  shell.  The 
glove  he  had  been  wearing  was  driven  into  the  red 
flesh.  Mrs.  Knocker  worked  over  his  hand  for 
half  an  hour,  picking  out  the  shredded  glove  bit 
by  bit. 

Except  for  a  short  walk  in  the  early  morning 
and  another  after  dark,  these  women  lived  im- 
mured in  their  dressing  station,  which  they  moved 
from  the  cellar  to  a  half-wrecked  house.  They 
lived  in  the  smell  of  straw,  blood  and  antiseptic. 
The  Germans  have  thrown  shells  into  the  wrecked 
village  almost  every  day.  Some  days  shelling  has 
been  vigorous.  The  churchyard  is  choked  with 
dead.  The  fields  are  dotted  with  hummocks 
where  men  and  horses  lie  buried.  Just  as  I  was 
sailing  for  America  in  March,  1915,  the  house 
where  the  women  live  and  work  was  shelled. 
They  came  to  La  Panne,  but  later  Mrs.  Knocker 
and  Miss  Chisholm  returned  to  Pervyse  to  go  on 
with  their  work,  which  is  famous  throughout  the 
Belgian  army. 

As  regiment  after  regiment  serves  its  turn  in 
the  trenches  of  Pervyse  it  passes  under  the  hands 

190 


WOMEN  UNDER  FIRE 

of  these  women.  "The  women  of  Pervyse"  are 
known  alike  to  generals,  colonels  and  privates  who 
held  steady  at  Liege  and  who  have  struggled  on 
ever  since.  For  many  months  these  nurses  have 
endured  the  noise  of  shell  fire  and  the  smells  of  the 
dead  and  the  stricken.  The  King  of  the  Belgians 
has  with  his  own  hands  pinned  upon  them  the 
Order  of  Leopold  II.  The  King  himself  wears 
the  Order  of  Leopold  I.  They  have  eased  and 
saved  many  hundreds  of  his  men. 

"No  place  for  a  woman,"  remarked  a  distin- 
guished Englishman  after  a  flying  visit  to  their 
home. 

"By  the  law  of  probabilities,  your  corps  will  be 
wiped  out  sooner  or  later,"  said  a  war  corre- 
spondent. 

Meantime  the  women  will  go  on  with  their  cool, 
expert  work.  The  only  way  to  stop  them  is  to 
stop  the  war. 


191 


HOW  WAR  SEEMS  TO  A  WOMAN 

(Bv  MRS.  ARTHUR  GLEASON) 

LIFE  at  the  front  is  not  organized  like  a  busi- 
ness office,  with  sharply  defined  duties  for 
each  worker.  War  is  raw  and  chaotic,  and  you 
take  hold  wherever  you  can  lock  your  grip.  We 
women  that  joined  the  Belgian  army  and  spent  a 
year  at  the  front,  did  duty  as  ambulance  riders, 
"dirty  nurses,"  in  a  Red  Cross  rescue  station  at 
the  Yser  trenches,  in  relief  work  for  refugees,  and 
in  the  commissariat  department.  We  tended 
wounded  soldiers,  sick  soldiers,  sick  peasants, 
wounded  peasants,  mothers,  babies,  and  colonies 
of  refugees. 

This  war  gave  women  one  more  chance  to  prove 
themselves.  For  the  first  time  in  history,  a  few 
of  us  were  allowed  through  the  lines  to  the  front 
trenches.  We  needed  a  man's  costume,  steady 
masculine  nerves,  physical  strength.  But  the 
work  itself  became  the  ancient  work  of  woman — 

192 


HOW  WAR  SEEMS  TO  A  WOMAN 

nursing  suffering,  making  a  home  for  lonely, 
hungry,  dirty  men.  This  new  thrust  of  woman- 
hood carried  her  to  the  heart  of  war.  But,  once 
arriving  there,  she  resumed  her  old  job,  and  be- 
came the  nurse  and  cook  and  mother  to  men. 
Woman  has  been  rebelling  against  being  put  into 
her  place  by  man.  But  the  minute  she  wins  her 
freedom  in  the  new  dramatic  setting,  she  finds 
expression  in  the  old  ways  as  caretaker  and  home- 
maker.  Her  rebellion  ceases  as  soon  as  she  is 
allowed  to  share  the  danger.  She  is  willing  to 
make  the  fires,  carry  the  water,  and  do  the  wash- 
ing, because  she  believes  the  men  are  in  the  right, 
and  her  labor  frees  them  for  putting  through  their 
work. 

It  all  began  for  me  in  Paris.  I  was  studying 
music,  and  living  in  the  American  Art  Students' 
Club,  in  the  summer  of  1914.  That  war  was 
declared  meant  nothing  to  me.  There  was  I  in 
a  comfortable  room  with  a  delightful  garden,  the 
Luxembourg,  just  over  the  way.  That  was  the 
first  flash  of  war.  I  went  down  to  the  Louvre  to 
see  the  Venus,  and  found  the  building  "Ferme." 
I  went  over  to  the  Luxembourg  Galleries — 

193 


GOLDEN  LADS 

"Ferme,"  again — and  the  Catacombs.  Then  it 
came  into  my  consciousness  that  all  Paris  was 
closed  to  me.  The  treasures  had  been  taken  away 
from  me.  The  things  planned  could  n't  be  done. 
War  had  snatched  something  from  me  personally. 
Next,  I  took  solace  in  the  streets.  I  had  to 
walk.  Paris  went  mad  with  official  speed — com- 
mandeered motors  flashed  officers  down  the  boule- 
vards under  martial  law.  They  must  get  a  na- 
tion ready,  and  Paris  was  the  capital.  War 
made  itself  felt,  still  more,  because  we  had  to  go 
through  endless  lines, — permis  de  sejours  at  little 
police  stations — standing  on  line  all  day,  dis- 
missed without  your  paper,  returning  next  morn- 
ing. Friends  began  to  leave  Paris  for  New  York. 
I  was  considered  queer  for  wishing  to  stay  on. 
The  chance  to  study  in  Paris  was  the  dream  of  a 
lifetime.  But,  now,  the  sound  of  the  piano  was 
forbidden  in  the  city,  and  that  made  the  desolation 
complete.  Work  and  recreation  had  been  taken 
away,  and  only  war  was  left.  And  when  Marie, 
our  favorite  maid  in  the  club,  sent  her  husband, 
our  doorkeeper,  to  the  front,  that  brought  war  in- 
side our  household. 

194 


HOW  WAR  SEEMS  TO  A  WOMAN 

As  the  Germans  drew  near  Paris,  many  of 
the  club  girls  thought  that  they  would  be  endan- 
gered. Every  one  was  talking  about  the  French 
Revolution.  People  expected  the  horrors  of  the 
Revolution  to  be  repeated.  Jaures  had  just  been 
shot,  the  syndicalists  were  wrecking  German  milk 
shops,  and  at  night  the  streets  had  noisy  mobs. 
People  were  fearing  revolution  inside  Paris,  more 
than  the  enemy  outside  the  city  gates.  War  was 
going  to  let  loose  that  terrible  thing  which  we 
believed  to  be  subliminal  in  the  French  nature. 

Women  had  to  be  off  the  streets  before  nine 
o'clock.  By  day  we  went  up  the  block  to  the 
Boulevard,  and  there  were  the  troops — a  band,  the 
tricolor,  the  officers,  the  men  in  sky  blue.  Their 
sweethearts,  their  wives  and  children  went  march- 
ing hand  in  hand  with  them,  all  singing  the  "Mar- 
seillaise." In  a  time  like  that,  where  there  is 
song,  there  is  weeping.  The  marching,  singing 
women  were  sometimes  sobbing  without  knowing 
it,  and  we  that  were  watching  them  in  the  street 
crowd  were  moved  like  them. 

When  I  crossed  to  England,  I  found  that  I 
wanted  to  go  back  and  have  more  of  the  wonder 

195 


GOLDEN  LADS 

of  war,  which  I  had  tasted  in  Paris.  The  won- 
der was  the  sparkle  of  equipment.  It  was  plain 
curiosity  to  see  troops  line  up,  to  watch  the  mili- 
tary pageant.  There  I  had  been  seeing  great 
handsome  horses,  men  in  shining  helmets  with  the 
horsehair  tail  of  the  casque  flowing  from  crest  to 
shoulder,  the  scarlet  breeches,  the  glistening  boots 
with  spurs.  It  was  pictures  of  childhood  coming 
true.  I  had  hardly  ever  seen  a  man  in  military 
uniform,  and  nothing  so  startling  as  those  French 
cuirassiers.  And  I  knew  that  gay  vivid  thing  was 
not  a  passing  street  parade,  but  an  array  that  was 
going  into  action.  What  would  the  action  be4? 
It  is  what  makes  me  fond  of  moving  pictures — 
variety,  color,  motion,  and  mystery.  The  story 
was  just  beginning.  How  would  the  plot  come 
out? 

Those  pictures  of  troops  and  guns,  grouping  and 
dissolving,  during  all  the  twelve  months  in  Flan- 
ders, never  failed  to  grip.  But  rarely  again  did 
I  see  that  display  of  fine  feathers.  For  the  fight- 
ing men  with  whom  I  lived  became  mud-covered. 
Theirs  was  a  dug-in  and  blown-out  existence,  with 
the  spatterings  of  storm  and  black  nights  on  them. 

196 


HOW  WAR  SEEMS  TO  A  WOMAN 

Their  clothing  took  on  the  soberer  colors  and 
weather-worn  aspect  of  the  life  itself  which  was 
no  sunny  boulevard  affair,  but  an  enduring  of  wet 
trenches  and  slimy  roads.  Those  people  in  Paris 
needed  that  high  key  to  send  them  out,  and  the 
early  brilliance  lifted  them  to  a  level  which  was 
able  to  endure  the  monotony. 

I  went  to  the  war  because  those  whom  I  loved 
were  in  the  war.  I  wished  to  go  where  they  were. 

Finally,  there  was  real  appeal  in  that  a  little 
unprotected  lot  of  people  were  being  trampled. 

I  crossed  in  late  September  to  Ostend  as  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Hector  Munro  Ambulance  Corps. 
With  us  were  two  women,  Elsie  Knocker,  an 
English  trained  nurse,  and  Mairi  Chisholm 
Gooden-Chisholm,  a  Scotch  girl.  There  were  a 
round  dozen  of  us,  doctors,  chauffeurs,  stretcher 
bearers.  Our  idea  of  what  was  to  be  required 
of  women  at  the  front  was  vague.  We  thought 
that  we  ought  to  know  how  to  ride  horseback,  so 
that  we  could  catch  the  first  loose  horse  that  gal- 
loped by  and  climb  on  him.  What  we  were  to 
do  with  the  wounded  was  n't  clear,  even  in  our 
own  minds.  We  bought  funny  little  tents  and 

197 


GOLDEN  LADS 

had  tent  practice  in  a  vacant  yard.  The  motor 
drive  from  Ostend  to  Ghent  was  through  autumn 
sunshine  and  beauty  of  field  flowers.  It  was  like 
a  dream,  and  the  dream  continued  in  Ghent, 
where  we  were  tumbled  into  the  Flandria  Palace 
Hotel  with  a  suite  of  rooms  and  bath,  and  two 
convalescing  soldiers  to  care  for  us.  We  looked 
at  ourselves  and  smiled  and  wondered  if  this  was 
war.  My  first  work  was  the  commissariat  for  our 
corps. 

Then  came  the  English  Naval  Reserves  and 
Marines  en  route  to  Antwerp.  They  had  been 
herded  into  the  cars  for  twelve  hours.  They  were 
happy  to  have  great  hunks  of  hot  meat,  bread,  and 
cigarettes.  Just  across  the  platform,  a  Belgian 
Red  Cross  train  pulled  in — nine  hundred 
wounded  men,  bandaged  heads  with  only  the  eyes 
showing,  stumps  of  arms  flapping  a  welcome. 
The  Belgians  had  been  shot  to  pieces,  holding  the 
line.  And,  now,  here  were  the  English  come  to 
save  them. 

This  looked  more  like  war  to  us.  From  the 
Palace  windows  we  hung  out  over  the  balcony  to 
see  the  Taubes.  I  knew  that  at  last  we  were  on 

198 


HOW  WAR  SEEMS  TO  A  WOMAN 

the  fringes  of  war.  Later,  we  were  to  be  at  the 
heart  of  it.  It  was  at  Melle  that  I  learned  I  was 
on  the  front  lines. 

We  went  up  the  road  from  Ghent  to  Melle  in 
blithe  ignorance,  we  three  women.  The  day 
before,  the  enemy  had  held  the  corner  with  a 
machine  gun. 

"Let 's  go  on  foot,  and  see  where  the  Germans 
were,"  suggested  "Scotch."  We  came  to  burned 
peasants'  houses.  Inside  the  wreckage,  soldiers 
crouched  with  rifles  ready  at  the  peek-holes.  A 
Reckitt's  bluing  factory  was  burning,  and  across 
the  field  were  the  Germans.  The  cottages  with- 
out doors  and  windows  were  like  toothless  old 
women.  Piles  of  used  cartridges  were  strewed 
around.  There  stood  a  gray  motor-car,  a  wounded 
German  in  the  back  seat,  his  hands  riddled,  the 
car  shot  through,  with  blood  in  the  bottom  from 
two  dead  Germans.  I  realized  the  power  of  the 
bullet,  which  had  penetrated  the  driver,  the 
padded  seat,  the  sheet  metal  and  splintered  the 
wood  of  the  tonneau.  We  saw  a  puff  of  white 
smoke  over  the  field  from  a  shrapnel.  That  was 
the  first  shell  I  had  seen  close.  It  meant  nothing 

199 


GOLDEN  LADS 

to  me.  In  those  early  days,  the  hum  of  a  shell 
seemed  no  more  than  the  chattering  of  sparrows. 
That  was  the  way  with  all  my  impressions  of  war 
— first  a  flash,  a  spectacle ;  later  a  realization,  and 
experience. 

I  went  into  Alost  during  a  mild  bombardment. 
The  crashing  of  timbers  was  fascinating.  It  is 
in  human  nature  to  enjoy  destruction.  I  used  to 
love  to  jump  on  strawberry  boxes  in  the  woodshed 
and  hear  them  crackle.  And  with  the  plunge  of 
the  shells,  something  echoed  back  to  the  delight 
of  my  childhood.  I  enjoyed  the  crash,  for  some- 
thing barbaric  stirred.  There  was  no  connection 
in  my  mind  between  the  rumble  and  wounded 
men.  The  curiosity  of  ignorance  wanted  to  see 
a  large  crash.  Shell-fire  to  me  was  a  noise. 

I  still  had  no  idea  of  war.  Of  course  I  knew 
that  there  would  be  hideous  things  which  I  did  n't 
have  in  home  life.  I  knew  I  could  stand  up  to 
dirty  monotonous  work,  but  I  was  afraid  I  should 
faint  if  I  saw  blood.  When  very  young,  I  had 
seen  a  dog  run  over,  and  I  had  seen  a  boy  playmate 
mutilate  a  turtle.  I  was  sickened.  Years  later, 
I  came  on  a  little  child  crying,  holding  up  its 

200 


HOW  WAR  SEEMS  TO  A  WOMAN 

hand.  The  wrist  was  bent  back  double,  and  the 
blood  spurting  till  the  little  one  was  drenched. 
Those  shocks  had  left  a  horror  in  me  of  seeing 
blood.  But  this  thing  that  I  feared  most  turned 
out  not  to  have  much  importance.  I  found  that 
the  man  who  bled  most  heavily  lay  quiet.  It  was 
not  the  bloodshed  that  unnerved  me.  It  was  the 
writhing  and  moaning  of  men  that  communicated 
their  pain  to  me.  I  seemed  to  see  those  whom  I 
loved  lying  there.  I  transferred  the  wound  to  the 
ones  I  love.  Sometimes  soldiers  gave  me  the  ad- 
dress of  wife  and  mother,  to  have  me  write  that 
they  were  well.  Then  when  the  wounded  came 
in,  I  thought  of  these  wives  and  mothers.  I  knew 
how  they  felt,  because  I  felt  so.  I  knew,  as  the 
Belgian  and  French  women  know,  that  the  war 
must  be  waged  without  wavering,  and  yet  I  always 
see  war  as  hideous.  There  was  no  glory  in  those 
stricken  men.  I  had  no  fear  of  dying,  but  I  had 
a  fear  of  being  mangled. 

One  evening  I  walked  into  the  Convent  Hos- 
pital where  the  wounded  lay  so  thickly  that  I  had 
to  step  over  the  stretcher  loads.  The  beds  were 
full,  the  floor  blocked,  only  one  door  open.  There 

201 


GOLDEN  LADS 

was  a  smell  of  foul  blood,  medicines,  the  stench 
of  trench  clothes.  It  came  on  an  empty  stomach, 
at  the  end  of  a  tired  day. 

"Sister,  will  you  hold  this  lamp*?"  a  nurse  said 
tome. 

I  held  it  over  a  man  with  a  yawning  hole  in  his 
abdomen.  He  lay  unmurmuring.  When  the 
doctor  pressed,  the  muscles  twitched.  I  asked 
some  one  to  hold  the  lamp.  I  went  into  the  court- 
yard, and  fainted.  Hard  work  would  have  saved 
me. 

One  other  time,  there  had  been  a  persistent  fire 
all  day.  A  boy  of  nineteen  was  brought  in 
screaming.  He  wanted  water  and  he  wanted  his 
mother.  In  our  dressing  station  room  were 
crowded  two  doctors,  three  women,  two  stretcher 
bearers,  a  chauffeur,  and  ten  soldiers.  They  cut 
away  his  uniform  and  boots.  His  legs  were  jelly, 
with  red  mouths  of  wounds.  His  leg  gave  at  the 
knee,  like  a  piece  of  limp  twine.  I  went  into  the 
next  room,  and  recovered  myself.  Then  I  re- 
turned, and  stayed  with  the  wounded.  The 
greatest  comfort  was  a  doctor,  who  said  it  was  a 
matter  of  stomach,  not  of  nerve.  A  sound  woman 

202 


HOW  WAR  SEEMS  TO  A  WOMAN 

does  n't  faint  at  the  sight  of  blood  any  quicker 
than  a  man  does.  Those  two  experiences  were  the 
only  times  when  the  horror  was  too  much  for  me. 
I  saw  terrible  things  and  was  able  to  see  them. 
With  the  dead  it  seems  different.  They  are  at 
peace.  It  is  motion  in  the  wounded  that  transfers 
suffering  to  oneself.  A  red  quiver  is  worse  than 
a  red  calm. 

Antwerp  fell.  The  retreating  Belgian  army 
swarmed  around  us,  passed  us.  In  the  excitement 
every  one  lost  her  kit  and  before  two  days  of 
actual  warfare  were  over  we  had  completely  for- 
gotten those  little  tents  that  we  had  practised 
pitching  so  carefully,  and  that  we  had  meant  to 
sleep  in  at  night.  Little,  dirty,  unkempt,  broken- 
hearted men  came  shuffling  in  the  dust  of  the  road 
by  day,  shambling  along  the  road  at  night. 
Thousands  of  them  passed.  No  sound,  save  the 
fall  of  footsteps.  No  contrast,  save  where  a 
huddle  of  refugees  passed,  their  children  beside 
them,  their  household  goods,  or  their  old  people, 
on  their  backs.  We  picked  up  the  wounded. 
There  was  no  time  for  the  dead.  In  and  out  and 
among  that  army  of  ants,  retreating  to  the  edge 

203 


GOLDEN  LADS 

of  Belgium  and  the  sea,  we  went.  There  seemed 
nothing  but  to  return  to  England. 

The  war  minister  of  Belgium  saw  us.  He 
placed  his  son,  Lieutenant  Robert  de  Broqueville, 
in  military  command  of  us.  We  had  access  to 
every  line,  all  the  way  to  the  trench  and  battle- 
field. We  became  a  part  of  the  Belgian  army. 
We  made  our  headquarters  at  Fumes.  Luckily, 
a  physician's  house  had  been  deserted,  with  china 
and  silver  on  the  table,  apples,  jellies  and  wines 
in  the  cellar.  We  commandeered  it. 

Winter  came.  The  soldiers  needed  a  dressing 
station  somewhere  along  the  front  from  Nieuport 
to  Dixmude.  Mrs.  Knocker  established  one 
thirty  yards  behind  the  front  line  of  trenches  at 
Pervyse.  Miss  Chisholm  and  I  joined  her.  In 
its  cellar  we  found  a  rough  bedstead  of  two  pieces 
of  unplaned  lumber,  with  clean  straw  for  a  mat- 
tress, awaiting  us.  Any  Englishwoman  is  re- 
spected in  the  Belgian  lines.  The  two  soldiers 
who  had  been  living  in  our  room  had  given  it  up 
cheerily.  They  had  searched  the  village  for  a 
clean  sheet,  and  showed  it  to  us  with  pride.  They 
lumped  the  straw  for  our  pillows,  and  stood  out- 

204 


side  through  the  night,  guarding  our  home  with 
fixed  bayonets.  It  was  the  most  moving  courtesy 
we  had  in  the  twelve  months  of  war.  The  air  in 
the  little  room  was  both  foul  and  chilly.  We 
took  off  our  boots,  and  that  was  the  extent  of  our 
undressing. 

The  dreariness  of  war  never  came  on  us  till  we 
went  out  there  to  live  behind  the  trenches.  To 
me  it  was  getting  up  before  dawn,  and  washing 
in  ice-cold  water,  no  time  to  comb  the  hair,  always 
carrying  a  feeling  of  personal  mussiness,  with  an 
adjustment  to  dirt.  It  is  hard  to  sleep  in  one's 
clothes,  week  after  week,  to  look  at  hands  that 
have  become  permanently  filthy.  One  morning 
our  chauffeur  woke  up,  feeling  grumpy.  He  had 
slept  with  a  visiting  doctor.  He  said  the  doc- 
tor's revolver  had  poked  him  all  night  long  in  the 
back.  The  doctor  had  worn  his  entire  equipment 
for  warmth,  like  the  rest  of  us.  I  suffered  from 
cold  wet  feet.  I  hated  it  that  there  was  never  a 
moment  I  could  be  alone.  The  toothbrush  was 
the  one  article  of  decency  clung  to.  I  seemed 
never  to  go  into  the  back  garden  to  clean  my  teeth 
without  bringing  on  shell-fire.  I  got  a  sense  of 

207 


GOLDEN  LADS 

there  being  a  connection  between  brushing  the 
teeth  and  the  enemy's  guns.  You  find  in  rough- 
ing it  that  a  coating  of  dirt  seems  to  keep  out 
chill.  We  women  suffered,  but  we  knew  that 
the  boys  in  tennis  shoes  suffered  more  in  that  wet 
season,  and  the  soldiers  without  socks,  just  the 
bare  feet  in  boots. 

In  the  late  fall,  we  rooted  around  in  the  de- 
serted barns  for  potatoes.  Once,  creeping  into  a 
farm,  which  was  islanded  by  water,  "Jane  Per- 
vyse,"  our  homeless  dog,  led  us  up  to  the  wrecked 
bedroom.  A  bonnet  and  best  dress  were  in  the 
cupboard.  A  soldier  put  on  the  bonnet  and 
grimaced.  Always  after  that,  in  passing  the 
house,  "Jane  Pervyse"  trembled  and  whined  as  if 
it  had  been  her  home  till  the  destruction  came. 

In  our  house,  we  cleaned  vegetables.  There 
was  nothing  romantic  about  our  work  in  these 
first  days.  It  was  mostly  cooking,  peeling  hun- 
dreds of  potatoes,  slicing  bushels  of  onions,  cut- 
ting up  chunks  of  meat,  until  our  arms  were 
aching.  These  bits  were  boiled  together  in  great 
black  pots.  Our  job,  when  it  was  n't  to  cook  the 
stew,  was  to  take  buckets  of  it  to  the  trenches. 

208 


HOW  WAR  SEEMS  TO  A  WOMAN 

Here  we  ladled  it  out  to  each  soldier.  Always 
we  went  early,  while  mist  still  hung  over  the 
ground,  for  we  could  see  the  Germans  on  clear 
days.  It  was  an  adventure,  tramping  in  the 
freezing  cold  of  night  to  the  outposts  and  in  early 
morning  to  the  trenches,  back  to  the  house  to  refill 
the  buckets,  back  to  the  trenches.  The  mornings 
were  bitterly  cold.  Very  early  in  my  career  as  a 
nurse,  I  rid  myself  of  skirts.  Boots,  covered  with 
rubber  boots  to  the  knees  in  wet  weather,  or  bound 
with  puttees  in  warm ;  breeches ;  a  leather  coat  and 
as  many  jerseys  as  I  could  walk  in — these  were 
my  clothes.  But,  as  I  slept  in  them,  they  did  n't 
keep  me  very  warm  in  the  early  morning. 

We  had  one  real  luxury  in  the  dressing  station 
— a  piano.  While  we  cooked  and  scrubbed  and 
pared  potatoes,  men  from  the  lines  played  for  us. 

There  were  other  things,  necessities,  that  we 
lacked.  Water,  except  for  the  stagnant  green 
liquid  that  lay  in  the  ditches  where  dead  men  and 
dead  horses  rotted,  we  went  without — once  for  as 
long  as  three  days.  During  that  time  we  boiled 
the  ditch  water  and  made  tea  of  it.  Even  then, 
it  was  a  deep  purplish  black  and  tasted  bitter. 

209 


GOLDEN  LADS 

All  we  could  do  to  help  the  wounded  was  to 
wash  off  mud  and  apply  the  simplest  of  first-aids, 
iodine  and  bandages.  We  burned  bloody  cloth- 
ing and  scoured  mackintoshes  and  scrubbed  floors. 
The  odors  were  bad,  a  mixture  of  decaying  matter 
and  raw  flesh  and  cooking  food  and  disinfectant. 

Pervyse  was  one  more  dear  little  Flemish  vil- 
lage,, with  yawning  holes  in  the  houses,  and 
through  the  holes  you  saw  into  the  home,  the 
precious  intimate  things  which  revealed  how  the 
household  lived — the  pump,  muffled  for  winter, 
the  furniture  placed  for  occupancy,  a  home  lately 
inhabited.  In  the  burgomaster's  house,  there  were 
two  old  mahogany  frames  with  rare  prints,  his 
store  of  medicines,  the  excellent  piano  which 
cheered  us,  in  his  attic  a  skeleton.  So  you  saw 
him  in  his  home  life  as  a  quiet,  scholarly  man  of 
taste  and  education.  You  entered  another  gaping 
house,  with  two  or  three  bits  of  inherited  mahog- 
any— clearly,  the  heirlooms  of  an  old  family. 
Another  house  revealed  bran  new  commonplace 
trinkets.  Always  the  status  of  the  family  was 
plain  to  see — their  mental  life,  their  tastes,  and 
ambitions.  You  would  peek  in  through  a  broken 

210 


HOW  WAR  SEEMS  TO  A  WOMAN 

front  and  see  a  cupboard  with  crotched  mahog- 
any trimmings,  one  door  splintered,  the  other  per- 
fect. You  would  catch  a  glimpse  of  a  round  cen- 
ter table  with  shapely  legs,  a  sofa  drawn  up  in 
front  of  a  fireplace.  When  we  went,  Pervyse 
was  still  partly  upstanding,  but  the  steady  shell- 
ing of  the  winter  months  slowly  flattened  it  into 
a  wreck.  It  is  the  sense  of  sight  through  which 
war  makes  its  strongest  impression  on  me. 

The  year  falls  into  a  series  of  pictures,  even- 
ings of  song  when  a  boy  soldier  would  improvise 
verses  to  our  head  nurse;  a  fight  between  a  Bel- 
gian corporal  and  an  English  nurse  with  seltzer 
bottles;  the  night  when  our  soldiers  were  short  of 
ammunition  and  we  sat  up  till  dawn  awaiting  the 
attack  that  might  send  us  running  for  our  lives; 
the  black  nights  when  some  spy  back  of  our  lines 
flashed  electric  messages  to  the  enemy  and  directed 
their  fire  on  our  ammunition  wagons. 

And  deeper  than  those  pictures  is  the  conscious- 
ness of  how  adaptable  is  the  human  spirit. 
Human  nature  insists  on  creating  something. 
Under  hunger  and  danger,  it  develops  a  wealth 
of  resource — in  art  and  music,  and  carving,  mak- 

211 


GOLDEN  LADS 

ing  finger-rings  of  shrapnel,  playing  songs  of  the 
Yser.  Something  artistic  and  playful  comes  to 
the  rescue.  Instead  of  war  getting  us  as  Andre- 
ieff's  "Red  Laugh"  says  it  does,  making  regiments 
of  men  mad,  we  "got"  war,  and  remained  sane. 
If  we  had  n't  conquered  it  by  spells  of  laughing 
relief,  we  should  n't  have  had  nerve  when  the  time 
came.  Too  much  strain  would  break  down  the 
bravest  Belgian  and  the  gayest  Fusilier  Marin. 

I  came  to  feel  I  would  rather  get  "pinked"  in 
Pervyse  than  retire  to  Fumes,  seven  miles  back 
of  the  trenches.  Pervyse  seemed  home,  because 
we  belonged  there  with  necessary  work  to  do. 
Then,  too,  there  was  a  certain  regularity  in  the 
German  gunfire.  If  they  started  shelling  from 
the  Chateau  de  Vicoigne,  they  were  likely  to  con- 
tinue shelling  from  that  point.  So  we  lived  that 
day  in  the  front  bedroom.  If  they  shelled  from 
Ramscappelle,  the  back  kitchen  became  the  better 
room,  for  we  had  a  house  in  between.  We  were 
so  near  their  guns,  that  we  could  plot  the  arc  of 
flight.  Pervyse  seemed  to  visitors  full  of  death, 
simply  because  it  received  a  daily  dose  of  shell- 
fire,  like  a  little  child  sitting  up  and  gulping  its 

212 


HOW  WAR  SEEMS  TO  A  WOMAN 

medicine.  With  what  unconcern  in  those  days 
we  went  out  by  ambulance  to  some  tight  angle, 
and  waited  for  something  to  happen. 

"We  're  right  by  a  battery."  But  the  battery 
was  interesting. 

"If  this  is  danger,  all  right.  It 's  great  to  be 
in  danger."  I  have  sat  all  day  writing  letters 
by  our  artillery.  Every  time  a  gun  went  off  my 
pencil  slid.  The  shock  was  so  sudden,  my  nerves 
never  took  it  on.  Yet  I  was  able  to  sleep  a  few 
yards  in  front  of  a  battery.  It  would  pound 
through  the  night,  and  I  never  heard  it.  The 
nervous  equipment  of  an  American  would  ravel 
out,  if  it  were  not  for  sound  sleep.  If  shells  came 
no  nearer  than  four  hundred  yards,  we  considered 
it  a  quiet  day. 

One  day  I  learned  the  full  meaning  of  fear. 
We  had  had  several  quiet  safe  hours.  Night 
was  coming  on,  and  we  were  putting  up  the  shut- 
ters, when  a  shell  fell  close  by  in  the  trench. 
Next,  our  floor  was  covered  with  dripping  men, 
five  of  them  unbandaged.  Shells  and  wounds 
were  connected  in  my  mind  by  that  close  suc- 
cession. 

213 


GOLDEN  LADS 

No  one  was  secure  in  that  wrecked  village 
of  Pervyse.  Along  the  streets,  homeless  dogs 
prowled,  pigeons  circled,  hungry  cats  howled. 
Behind  the  trenches,  the  men  had  buried  their 
dead  and  had  left  great  mounds  where  they  had 
tried  to  bury  the  horses.  Shells  dropped  every 
day,  some  days  all  day.  I  have  seen  men  run- 
ning along  the  streets,  flattening  themselves 
against  a  house  whenever  they  heard  the  whirr  of 
a  shell. 

It  is  not  easy  to  eat,  and  sleep,  and  live  together 
in  close  quarters,  sometimes  with  rush  work, 
sometimes  through  severer  hours  of  aimless  wait- 
ing. Again  and  again,  we  became  weary  of  one 
another,  impatient  over  trifles. 

What  war  does  is  to  reveal  human  nature.  It 
does  not  alter  it.  It  heightens  the  brutality  and 
the  heroism.  Selfishness  shines  out  nakedly  and 
kindliness  is  seen  clearer  than  in  routine  peace 
days.  War  brings  out  what  is  inside  the  person. 
Sentimental  pacifists  sit  around  three  thousand 
miles  away  and  say,  "War  brutalizes  men,"  and 
when  I  hear  them  I  think  of  the  English  Tommies 
giving  me  their  little  stock  of  cigarettes  for  the 

214 


HOW  WAR  SEEMS  TO  A  WOMAN 

Belgian  soldiers.  Then  I  read  the  militarists  and 
they  say,  "Be  hard.  Live  dangerously.  War  is 
beneficent,"  and  I  see  the  wrecked  villages  of 
Belgium,  with  the  homeless  peasants  and  the 
orphaned  babies.  War  ennobles  some  men  by 
sacrifice,  by  heroism.  It  debases  other  men  by 
handing  over  the  weak  to  them  for  torture  and 
murder.  What  is  in  the  man  comes  out  under 
the  supreme  test,  where  there  are  no  courts  of 
appeal,  no  public  opinion,  no  social  restraint; 
only  the  soldier  alone  with  helpless  victims. 

You  can't  share  the  chances  of  life  and  death 
with  people,  without  feeling  a  something  in  com- 
mon with  them,  that  you  do  not  have  even  with 
life-long  friends.  The  high  officer  and  the  cock- 
ney Tommy  have  that  linking  up.  There  was 
one  person  whom  I  could  n't  grow  to  like.  But 
with  him  I  have  shared  a  ticklish  time,  and  there 
is  that  cord  of  connection.  Then,  too,  one  is  glad 
of  a  record  of  oneself.  There  is  some  one  to 
verify  what  you  say.  You  have  passed  through 
an  unbelievable  thing  together,  and  you  have  a 
witness. 

Henri,  our  Belgian  orderly,  has  that  feeling 
217 


GOLDEN  LADS 

for  us,  and  we  for  him.  It  is  n't  respect,  nor  fond- 
ness, alone.  Companionship  meant  for  him  new 
shirts,  dry  boots,  more  chocolate,  a  daily  supply 
of  cigarettes.  It  meant  our  seeing  the  picture  of 
wife  and  child  in  Liege,  hearing  about  his  home. 
It  was  the  sharing  of  danger,  the  facing  together 
of  the  horror  that  underlies  life,  and  which  we 
try  to  forget  in  soft  peace  days.  The  friendships 
of  war  are  based  on  a  more  fundamental  thing 
than  the  friendships  of  safe  living.  In  the  su- 
preme experience  of  motherhood,  the  woman  goes 
down  alone  into  the  place  of  suffering,  leaving  the 
man,  however  dear,  far  away.  But  in  this  su- 
preme experience  of  facing  death  to  save  life, 
you  go  together.  The  little  Belgian  soldier  is  at 
your  side.  Together  you  sit  tight  under  fire,  put 
the  bandages  on  the  wounded,  and  speed  back  to 
a  safer  place. 

Once  I  went  to  the  farthest  outpost.  A  Bel- 
gian soldier  stepped  out  of  the  darkness. 

"Come  along,  miss,  I  've  a  good  gun.  I  '11  take 
you." 

Walking  up  the  road,  not  in  the  middle  where 
machine  guns  could  rake  us,  but  huddled  up  by 

2l8 


HOW  WAR  SEEMS  TO  A  WOMAN 

the  trees  at  the  siding,  we  went.  It  will  be  a  dif- 
ferent thing  to  meet  him  one  day  in  Antwerp,  than 
it  will  be  to  greet  again  the  desk-clerk  of  the 
La  Salle  Hotel  in  Chicago.  It  lies  deeper  than 
doing  you  favors,  and  assigning  a  sunny  room. 

The  men  are  not  impersonal  units  in  an  army 
machine.  They  become  individuals  to  us,  with 
sharply  marked  traits.  It  is  impossible  to  see 
them  as  cases.  Out  of  the  individuals,  we  built 
our  types — we  constructed  our  Belgian  soldier, 
out  of  the  hundreds  who  had  told  us  of  their  work 
and  home. 

"You  must  have  met  so  many  you  never  came 
to  know  their  stories." 

It  was  the  opposite.  Paul  Collaer,  who  played 
beautifully;  Gilson,  the  mystic;  Henri  of  Liege; 
the  son  of  Ysaye,  they  were  all  clear  to  us.  There 
was  a  splendid  fat  doctor  who  felt  physical  fear, 
but  never  shirked  his  job.  He  used  to  go  and 
hide  behind  the  barn,  with  his  pipe,  till  there  was 
work  for  him.  His  was  n't  the  fear  that  spreads 
disaster  through  a  crowd.  He  was  fat  and 
funny.  A  fat  man  is  comfortable  to  have  around, 
at  any  time,  even  when  he  is  unhappy.  No  one 

219 


GOLDEN  LADS 

lost  respect  for  this  man.     Every  one  enjoyed  him 
thoroughly. 

Commandant  Gilson  of  the  Belgian  army  was 
one  of  our  firm  friends.  My  introduction  to  him 
was  when  I  heard  a  bit  of  a  Liszt  rhapsody  float- 
ing into  the  kitchen  from  our  piano,  the  fingers 
rapid  and  fluent,  and  long  nails  audible  on  the 
keys.  I  remember  the  first  meal  with  him,  a 
luncheon  of  fried  sardines,  fruit  cake,  bread  and 
cheese.  The  doctor  across  the  way  had  sent  a  bot- 
tle of  champagne.  After  luncheon  he  received 
word  of  an  attack.  He  kissed  the  hand  of  each  of 
us,  said  good-by,  and  went  out  to  clean  his  gun. 
We  did  not  think  we  should  see  him  again.  He 
retook  the  outpost  and  had  many  more  meals  with 
us.  He  would  rise  from  broken  English  into 
swift  French — stories  of  the  Congo,  one  night  till 
2  A.M.  Always  smoking  a  cigarette — his  mus- 
tache sometimes  singed  from  the  fire  of  the  dimin- 
ishing butt.  For  orderly,  he  had  a  black  fat 
Congo  boy,  in  dark  blue  Belgian  uniform,  flat- 
nosed,  with  wrinkles  down  the  forehead.  He 
was  Gilson's  man,  never  looking  at  him  in  speak- 
ing, and  using  an  open  vowel  dialect.  Before 

220 


HOW  WAR  SEEMS  TO  A  WOMAN 

one  of  the  attacks,  a  soldier  came  to  Gilson  with 
his  wife's  picture,  watch,  ring,  and  money,  and 
his  home  address. 

"I  'm  not  going  to  come  out,"  said  the  soldier. 

It  happened  so. 

The  Commandant's  pockets  were  heavy  with 
these  mementoes  of  the  predestined — the  letters 
of  boys  to  their  mothers.  He  had  that  tenderness 
and  agreeable  sentiment  which  seem  to  go  with 
bravery.  He  filled  his  uniform  with  souvenirs 
of  pleasant  times,  a  china  slipper — our  dinner 
favor  to  him — a  roadside  weed,  a  paper  napkin 
from  a  happy  luncheon — a  score  or  more  little 
pieces  of  sentimental  value.  When  he  went  into 
dangerous  action,  he  never  ordered  any  one  to  fol- 
low him.  He  called  for  volunteers,  and  was 
grieved  that  it  was  the  lads  of  sixteen  and  seven- 
teen years  that  were  always  the  first  to  offer. 

We  had  grown  to  care  for  these  men.  From 
the  first,  soldiers  of  France  and  Belgium  had 
given  us  courtesy.  In  Paris,  it  was  a  soldier  who 
stood  in  line  for  me,  and  got  the  paper.  It  was 
a  soldier  who  shared  his  food  and  wine  on  the 
fourteen-hour  trip  from  Paris  to  Dieppe — four 

221 


GOLDEN  LADS 

hours  in  peace  days,  fourteen  hours  in  mobiliza- 
tion. It  was  a  soldier  who  left  the  car  and  found 
out  the  change  of  train  and  the  hour — always  a 
soldier  who  did  the  helpful  thing.  It  did  not 
require  war  to  create  their  quality  of  friendliness 
and  unselfish  courtesy. 

How  could  Red  Cross  work  be  impersonal? 
No  one  would  go  over  to  be  shot  at  on  an  imper- 
sonal errand  of  mercy.  You  risk  yourself  for 
individual  men,  for  men  in  whose  cause  you  be- 
lieve. Surely,  the  loyal  brave  German  women 
feel  as  we  felt.  Red  Cross  work  is  not  only  a 
service  to  suffering  flesh.  It  is  work  to  remake  a 
soldier,  who  will  make  right  prevail.  The  Red 
Cross  worker  is  aiming  her  rifle  at  the  enemy  by 
every  bandage  she  ties  on  wounded  Belgians. 
She  is  rebuilding  the  army.  She  is  as  efficient 
and  as  deadly  as  the  workman  that  makes  the 
powder,  the  chauffeur  that  drives  it  to  the  trench 
in  transports,  and  the  gunner  that  shoots  it 
into  the  hostile  line.  The  mother  does  not  ex- 
tend her  motherliness  to  the  destroyer  of  her 
family.  There  is  no  hater  like  the  mother  when 
she  faces  that  which  violates  her  brood.  The 

222 


HOW  WAR  SEEMS  TO  A  WOMAN 

same  mother  instinct  makes  you  take  care  of  your 
own,  and  fight  for  your  own.  We  all  of  us  would 
go  for  a  Belgian  first,  and  tend  to  a  Belgian  first. 
We  would  take  one  of  our  own  by  the  roadside  in 
preference,  if  there  was  room  only  for  one.  But 
if  you  brought  in  a  German,  wounded,  he  became 
an  individual  in  need  of  help.  There  was  a  high 
pride  in  doing  well  by  him.  We  would  show 
them  of  what  stuff  the  Allies  were  made.  Clear 
of  hate  and  bitterness,  we  had  nothing  but  good 
will  for  the  gallant  little  German  boys,  who 
smiled  at  us  from  their  cots  in  Fumes  hospital. 
And  who  could  be  anything  but  kindly  for  the 
patient  German  fathers  of  middle  age,  who  lay 
in  pain  and  showed  pictures  of  "Frau"  and  the 
home  country,  where  some  of  them  would  never 
return.  Two  or  three  times,  the  Queen  of  the 
Belgians  stopped  at  our  base  hospital.  She  talked 
with  the  wounded  Germans  exactly  as  she  talked 
to  her  own  Belgians — the  same  modest  courtesy 
and  gift  of  personal  caring. 

I  think  the  key  to  our  experience  was  the  mother 
instinct  in  the  three  women.  What  we  tried  to 
do  was  to  make  a  home  out  of  an  emergency  sta- 

223 


> 


GOLDEN  LADS 

tion  at  the  heart  of  war.  We  took  hold  of  a 
room  knee-high  with  battered  furniture  and  wet 
plaster,  cleaned  it,  spread  army  blankets  on 
springs,  found  a  bowl  and  jug,  and  made  a  den  for 
the  chauffeur.  In  our  own  room,  we  arranged  an 
old  lamp,  then  a  shade  to  soften  the  light.  On  a 
mantel,  were  puttees,  cold  cream  and  a  couple 
of  books;  in  the  wall,  nails  for  coats  and  scarfs. 
The  soldiers,  entering,  said  it  was  homelike.  It 
was  a  rest  after  the  dreariness  of  the  trench. 
We  brought  glass  from  Furnes,  and  patched  the 
windows.  We  dined,  slept,  lived,  and  tended 
wounded  men  in  the  one  room.  In  another  room, 
a  shell  had  sprayed  the  ceiling,  so  we  had  to  pull 
the  plaster  down  to  the  bare  lathing.  We  com- 
mandeered a  stove  from  a  ruined  house.  Night 
after  night,  we  carried  a  sick  man  there  and  had  a 
fire  for  him.  We  treated  him  for  a  bad  throat, 
and  put  him  to  bed.  A  man  dripping  from  the 
inundations,  we  dried  out.  For  a  soldier  with 
bruised  feet,  we  prepared  a  pail  of  hot  water,  and 
gave  a  thorough  soaking. 

In  the  early  morning  we  took  down  the  shut- 
ters, carried  our  own  coal,  built  our  own  fires, 

224 


HOW  WAR  SEEMS  TO  A  WOMAN 

brought  water  from  a  ditch,  scrubbed  table  tops 
and  swept  the  floor,  prepared  tincture  of  iodine, 
the  bandages,  and  cotton  wool.  We  went  up  the 
road  around  8.30,  for  the  Germans  had  a  habit 
of  shelling  at  9  o'clock.  Sometimes  they  broke 
their  rule,  and  began  lopping  them  in  at  half- 
past  eight.  Then  we  had  to  wait  till  ten.  We 
kept  water  hot  for  sterilizing  instruments.  We 
sat  around,  reading,  thinking,  chatting,  letter-writ- 
ing, waiting  for  something  to  happen.  There 
would  be  long  days  of  waiting.  There  were 
days  when  there  was  no  shelling.  Besides  the 
wounded,  we  had  visits  from  important  person- 
ages— the  Mayor  of  Paris,  the  Queen  of  the  Bel- 
gians, officers  from  headquarters,  Maxine  Elliott. 
For  a  very  special  supper,  we  would  jug  a  Bel- 
gian hare  or  cook  curry  and  rice,  and  add  beer, 
jam,  and  black  army  bread.  An  officer  gave 
us  an  order  for  one  hundred  kilos  of  meat,  and 
we  could  send  daily  for  it.  On  Christmas  Day, 
1914,  for  eight  of  us,  we  had  plum  puddings,  a 
bottle  of  port,  a  bottle  of  champagne,  a  tiny 
pheasant  and  a  small  chicken,  and  a  box  of 
candies.  We  had  a  steady  stream  of  shells,  and 

225 


GOLDEN  LADS 

a  few  wounded.  It  was  a  day  of  sunshine  on  a 
light  fall  of  snow. 

I  learned  in  the  Pervyse  work  that  an  up-to- 
date  skirt  is  no  good  for  a  man's  work.  With 
rain  five  days  out  of  seven,  rubber  boots,  breeches, 
raincoat,  two  pairs  of  stockings,  and  three  jerseys 
are  the  correct  costume.  We  were  criticized  for 
going  to  Dunkirk  in  breeches.  So  I  put  on  a 
skirt  one  time  when  I  went  there  for  supplies.  I 
fell  in  alighting  from  the  motor-car,  collecting  a 
bigger  crowd  by  sprawling  than  any  of  us  had  col- 
lected by  our  uniform.  Later,  again  in  a  skirt,  I 
jumped  on  a  military  motor-car,  and  could  n't 
climb  the  side.  I  had  to  pull  my  skirt  up,  and 
climb  over  as  a  man  climbs.  If  women  are  doing 
the  work  of  a  man,  they  must  have  the  dress  of  a 
man. 

That  way  of  dressing  and  of  living  released 
me  from  the  sense  of  possession,  once  and  for  all. 
When  I  first  went  to  Belgium  with  a  pair  of 
fleece-lined  gloves,  I  was  sure,  if  I  ever  lost  that 
pair,  that  they  were  irreplaceable.  I  lost  them. 
I  lost  article  after  article,  and  was  freed  from  the 
clinging.  I  lost  a  pin  for  the  bodice.  I  left 

226 


HOW  WAR  SEEMS  TO  A  WOMAN 

my  laundry  with  a  washerwoman.  Her  village 
was  bombarded,  and  we  had  to  move  on.  I  lost 
my  kit.  A  woman  has  a  tie-in  with  those  mate- 
rial things,  and  the  new  life  brought  freedom  from 
that. 

I  put  on  a  skirt  to  return  to  London  for  a  rest. 
I  found  there  people  dressed  modishly,  and  it 
looked  uncomfortable.  Styles  had  been  chang- 
ing :  women  were  in  funny  shoes  and  hats.  I  went 
wondering  that  they  could  dress  like  that. 

And  then  an  overpowering  desire  for  pretty 
things  came  on  me — for  a  piece  of  old  lace,  a  pink 
ribbon.  After  sleeping  by  night  in  the  clothes 
worn  through  the  day,  wearing  the  same  two  shirts 
for  four  months,  no  pajamas,  no  sheets,  with  spots 
of  grease  and  blood  on  all  the  costume,  I  had  a 
longing  for  frivolous  things,  such  as  a  pink  tea 
gown.  Old  slippers  and  a  bath  and  shampoo 
seemed  good.  I  had  a  wholesome  delight  in  a 
modest  clean  blouse  and  in  buying  a  new  frock. 

I  returned  to  Pervyse.  The  Germans  changed 
their  range :  an  evening,  a  morning  and  an  after- 
noon— three  separate  bombardments  with  heavy 
shells.  The  wounded  were  brought  in.  Nearly 

227 


GOLDEN  LADS 

every  one  died.  We  piled  them  together,  any- 
where that  they  wouldn't  be  tripped  over.  To 
the  back  kitchen  we  carried  the  bodies  of  two 
boys.  One  of  the  orderlies  knew  them.  He  went 
in  with  us  to  remove  the  trinkets  from  their  necks. 
Every  now  and  then,  he  went  back  again,  to  look 
at  them.  They  were  very  beautiful,  young, 
healthy,  lying  there  together  in  the  back  kitchen. 
It  was  a  quiet  half  hour  for  us,  after  luncheon. 
The  doctors  and  nurses  were  reading  or  smoking. 
I  was  writing  a  letter. 

A  shell  drove  itself  through  the  back  kitchen 
wall  and  exploded  over  the  dead  boys,  bringing 
rafters  and  splintered  glass  and  bricks  down  on 
them.  My  pencil  slid  diagonally  across  the  sheet, 
and  I  got  up.  Our  two  orderlies  and  three 
soldiers  rushed  in,  holding  their  eyes  from  the 
blue  fumes  of  the  explosion.  When  one  shell 
comes,  the  chances  are  that  it  will  be  followed  by 
three  more,  aimed  at  the  same  place.  It  had 
always  been  my  philosophy  that  it  is  better  to  be 
"pinked"  in  the  house  than  on  the  road,  but  not 
on  this  particular  day.  An  army  ambulance  was 
standing  opposite  our  door,  with  its  nose  turned 

228 


POSTCARDS     SKETCHED    AXD     BLOCKED     BY    A     BELGIAN 
WORKMAN,  A.  VAN  DOORNE. 

Belgium  suffering,  but  united,  is  the  idea  he  brings  out  in  his  work. 


HOW  WAR  SEEMS  TO  A  WOMAN 

toward  the  trenches.  The  Belgian  driver  rushed 
for  the  door,  slammed  it  shut  because  of  the  shells, 
opened  it  again.  He  ran  to  the  car,  cranked  it, 
turned  it  around.  We  stood  in  the  doorway  and 
waited,  watching  the  shells  dropping  with  a  wail, 
tearing  up  the  road  here,  then  there.  After  that 
we  moved  back  to  La  Panne. 

There  I  stayed  on  with  Miss  Georgie  Fyfe, 
who  is  doing  such  excellent  work  among  the  Bel- 
gian refugees.  She  is  chief  of  the  evacuation  of 
civilians  who  still  remain  in  the  bombarded  vil- 
lages and  farms.  She  brings  the  old  and  the  sick 
and  the  children  out  of  shell  fire  and  finds  them 
safe  homes.  To  the  Refugee  House  she  takes  the 
little  ones  to  be  cared  for  till  there  are  fifty. 
Then  she  sends  them  to  Switzerland,  where 
brothers  and  sisters  are  kept  unseparated  in  family 
groups  until  the  war  is  over.  The  Queen  busies 
herself  with  these  children.  For  the  newest  gen- 
eration of  Belgians  Miss  Fyfe  has  established  a 
Maternity  Hospital.  Nearly  one  hundred  babies 
have  come  to  live  there. 

It  was  my  work  to  keep  track  of  clothes  and 
supplies.  On  a  flying  trip  to  Paris,  I  told  the 

231 


GOLDEN  LADS 

American  Relief  Committee  the  story  of  this 
work,  and  Geoffrey  Dodge  sent  thirty  complete 
layettes,  bran-new,  four  big  cases,  four  gunny- 
sack  bags,  full  of  clothing  for  men,  women,  and 
children,  special  brands  of  milk  for  young  mothers 
in  our  maternity  hospital.  Later,  he  sent  four 
more  sacks  and  four  great  wooden  cases. 

We  used  to  tramp  through  many  fields,  over  a 
single  plank  bridging  the  ditches,  to  reach  the 
lonely  shelled  farm,  and  persuade  the  stubborn, 
unimaginative  Flemish  parents  to  give  up  their 
children  for  a  safe  home.  One  mother  had  a  yoke 
around  her  neck,  and  two  heavy  pails. 

"When  can  I  send  my  child*?"  she  asked. 

She  had  already  sent  two  and  had  received 
happy  letters  from  them.  Other  mothers  are  sus- 
picious of  us,  and  flatly  refuse,  keeping  their  chil- 
dren in  the  danger  zone  till  death  comes.  During 
a  shelling,  the  cure  would  telephone  for  our  ambu- 
lance. He  would  collect  the  little  ones  and  sick 
old  people.  Miss  Fyfe  could  persuade  them  to 
come  more  easily  when  the  shells  were  falling. 
At  the  moment  of  parting,  everybody  cries.  The 
children  are  dressed.  The  one  best  thing  they 

232 


HOW  WAR  SEEMS  TO  A  WOMAN 

own  is  put  on — a  pair  of  shoes  from  the  attic,  stiff 
new  shoes,  worked  on  the  little  feet  unused  to 
shoes.  Out  of  a  family  of  ten  children  we  would 
win  perhaps  three.  Back  across  the  fields  they 
trooped  to  our  car,  clean  faces,  matted  dirty  hair, 
their  wee  bundle  tied  up  in  a  colored  handker- 
chief, no  hats,  under  the  loose  dark  shirt  a  tiny 
Catholic  charm.  We  lifted  the  little  people  into 
the  big  yellow  ambulance — big  brother  and  sis- 
ter, sitting  at  the  end  to  pin  them  in.  We  carried 
crackers  and  chocolate.  They  are  soon  happy 
with  the  sweets,  chattering,  enjoying  their  first 
motor-car  ride,  and  eager  for  the  new  life. 


233 


LES  TRAVAILLEURS  DE  LA  GUERRE 

The  boy  soldier  is  willing  to  make  any  day  his  last  if 
it  is  a  good  day.  It  is  not  so  with  the  middle-aged  man. 
He  is  puzzled  by  the  war.  What  he  has  to  struggle  with 
more  than  bodily  weakness  is  the  malady  of  thought. 
Is  the  bloody  business  worth  while  ? 

I  SAW  him  first,  my  middle-aged  man,  one 
afternoon  on  the  boards  of  an  improvised 
stage  in  the  sand-dunes  of  Belgium.  On  that  last 
thin  strip  of  the  shattered  kingdom  English  and 
French  and  Belgians  were  grimly  massed.  He 
was  a  Frenchman,  and  he  was  cheering  up  his  com- 
rades. With  shining  black  hair  and  volatile  face, 
he  played  many  parts  that  day.  He  recited 
sprightly  verses  of  Parisian  life.  He  carried  on 
amazing  twenty-minute  dialogues  with  himself, 
mimicking  the  voice  of  girl  and  woman,  bully  and 
dandy.  His  audience  had  come  in  stale  from 
the  everlasting  spading  and  marching.  They 
brightened  visibly  under  his  gaiety.  If  he  cared 
to  make  that  effort  in  the  saddened  place,  they 

234 


LES  TRAVAILLEURS  DE  LA  GUERRE 

were  ready  to  respond.  When  he  dismissed  them, 
the  last  flash  of  him  was  of  a  smiling,  rollicking 
improvisator,  bowing  himself  over  to  the  applause 
till  his  black  hair  was  level  with  our  eyes. 

And  then  next  day  as  I  sat  in  my  ambulance, 
waiting  orders,  he  trudged  by  in  his  blue,  "the 
color  of  heaven"  once,  but  musty  now  from  nights 
under  the  rain.  His  head  of  hair,  which  the 
glossy  black  wig  had  covered,  was  gray-white. 
The  sparkling,  pantomimic  face  had  dropped  into 
wrinkles.  He  was  patient  and  old  and  tired. 
Perhaps  he,  too,  would  have  been  glad  of  some 
one  to  cheer  him  up.  He  was  just  one  more  terri- 
torial— trench-digger  and  sentry  and  filler-in. 
He  became  for  me  the  type  of  all  those  faithful, 
plodding  soldiers  whose  first  strength  is  spent.  In 
him  was  gathered  up  all  that  fatigue  and  sadness 
of  men  for  whom  no  glamour  remains. 

They  went  past  me  every  day,  hundreds  of 
them,  padding  down  the  Nieuport  road,  their  feet 
tired  from  service  and  their  boots  road-worn — 
crowds  of  men  beyond  numbering,  as  far  as  one 
could  see  into  the  dry,  volleying  dust  and  beyond 
the  dust;  men  coming  toward  me,  a  nation  of 

235 


GOLDEN  LADS 

them.  They  came  at  a  long,  uneven  jog,  a  clut- 
tered walk.  Every  figure  was  sprinkled  and  en- 
circled by  dust — dust  on  their  gray  temples,  and 
on  their  wet,  streaming  faces,  dust  coming  up  in 
puffs  from  their  shuffling  feet,  too  tired  to  lift 
clear  of  the  heavy  roadbed.  There  was  a  hot, 
pitiless  sun,  and  every  man  of  them  was  shrouded 
in  the  long,  heavy  winter  coat,  as  soggy  as  a  horse 
blanket,  and  with  thick  leather  gaiters,  loose,  flap- 
ping, swathing  their  legs  as  if  with  bandages.  On 
the  man's  back  was  a  pack,  with  the  huge  swell  of 
the  blanket  rising  up  beyond  the  neck  and  gener- 
ating heat-waves;  a  loaf  of  tough  black  bread  fast- 
ened upon  the  knapsack  or  tied  inside  a  faded  red 
handkerchief;  and  a  dingy,  scarred  tin  Billy-can. 
At  his  shapeless,  rolling  waist  his  belt  hung  heavy 
with  a  bayonet  in  its  casing.  On  the  shoulder 
rested  a  dirt-caked  spade,  with  a  clanking  of 
metal  where  the  bayonet  and  the  Billy-can  struck 
the  handle  of  the  spade.  Under  a  peaked  cap 
showed  the  bearded  face  and  the  white  of  strained 
eyes  gleaming  through  dust  and  sweat.  The  man 
was  too  tired  to  smile  and  talk.  The  weight  of 
the  pack,  the  weight  of  the  clothes,  the  dust,  the 

236 


LES  TRAVAILLEURS  DE  LA  GUERRE 

smiting  sun — all  weighted  down  the  man,  leaving 
every  line  in  his  body  sagging  and  drooping  with 
weariness. 

These  are  the  men  that  spade  the  trenches,  drive 
the  food-transports  and  ammunition-wagons,  and 
carry  through  the  detail  duties  of  small  honor  that 
the  army  may  prosper.  When  has  it  happened 
before  that  the  older  generation  holds  up  the 
hands  of  the  young?  At  the  western  front  they 
stand  fast  that  the  youth  may  go  forward.  They 
fill  in  the  shell-holes  to  make  a  straight  path  for 
less-tired  feet.  They  drive  up  food  to  give  good 
heart  to  boys. 

War  is  easy  for  the  young.  The  boy  soldier 
is  willing  to  make  any  day  his  last  if  it  is  a  good 
day.  It  is  not  so  with  the  middle-aged  man.  He 
is  puzzled  by  the  war.  What  he  has  to  struggle 
with  more  than  bodily  weakness  is  the  malady  of 
thought.  Is  the  bloody  business  worth  while? 
Is  there  any  far-off  divine  event  which  his  death 
will  hasten?  The  wines  of  France  are  good 
wines,  and  his  home  in  fertile  Normandy  was 
pleasant. 

As  we  stood  in  the  street  in  the  sun  one  hot 

237 


GOLDEN  LADS 

afternoon,  four  men  came  carrying  a  wounded 
man.  The  stretcher  was  growing  red  under  its 
burden.  The  man's  face  was  greenish  white,  with 
a  stubble  of  beard.  The  flesh  of  his  body  was  as 
white  as  snow  from  loss  of  blood.  It  was  torn 
at  the  chest  and  sides.  They  carried  him  to  the 
dressing-station,  and  half  an  hour  later  lifted  him 
into  our  car.  We  carried  him  in  for  two  miles. 
Four  flies  fed  on  the  red  rim  of  his  closed  left 
eye.  He  lay  silent,  motionless.  Only  a  slight 
flutter  of  the  coverlet,  made  by  his  breathing,  gave 
a  sign  of  life.  At  the  Red  Cross  post  we  stopped. 
The  coverlet  still  slightly  rose  and  fell.  The 
doctor,  brown-bearded,  in  white  linen,  stepped 
into  the  car,  tapped  the  man's  wrist,  tested  his 
pulse,  put  a  hand  over  his  heart.  Then  the  doc- 
tor muttered,  drew  the  coverlet  over  the  greenish- 
white  face,  and  ordered  the  marines  to  remove 
him.  In  the  moment  of  arrival  the  wounded  man 
had  died. 

In  the  courtyard  next  our  post  two  men  were 
carrying  in  long  strips  of  wood.  This  wood  was 
for  coffins,  and  one  of  them  would  be  his. 

A  funeral  passes  our  car,  one  every  day,  some- 
238 


LES  TRAVAILLEURS  DE  LA  GUERRE 

times  two:  a  wooden  cross  in  front,  carried  by  a 
soldier;  the  white-robed  chaplain  chanting;  the 
box  of  light  wood,  on  a  frame  of  black ;  the  coffin 
draped  in  the  tricolor,  a  squad  of  twenty  soldiers 
following  the  dead.  That  is  the  funeral  of  the 
middle-aged  man.  There  is  no  time  wasted  on 
him  in  the  brisk  business  of  war ;  but  his  comrades 
bury  him.  One  in  particular  faithful  at  funerals 
I  had  learned  to  know — M.  Le  Doze.  War  itself 
is  so  little  the  respecter  of  persons  that  this  man 
had  found  himself  of  value  in  paying  the  last 
small  honor  to  the  obscure  dead  as  they  were 
carried  from  his  Red  Cross  post  to  the  burial- 
ground.  One  hopes  that  he  will  receive  no  hasty 
trench  burial  when  his  own  time  comes. 

I  cannot  write  of  the  middle-aged  man  of  the 
Belgians  because  he  has  been  killed.  That  first 
mixed  army,  which  in  thin  line  opposed  its  body 
to  an  immense  machine,  was  crushed  by  weight 
and  momentum.  Little  is  left  but  a  memory. 
But  I  shall  not  forget  the  veteran  officer  of  the 
first  army,  near  Lokeren,  who  kept  his  men  under 
cover  while  he  ran  out  into  the  middle  of  the  road 
to  see  if  the  Uhlans  were  coming.  The  only  Bel- 

239 


GOLDEN  LADS 

gian  army  to-day  is  an  army  of  boys.  Recently 
we  had  a  letter  from  Andre  Simon t,  of  the  "Obu- 
siers  Lourdes,  Beiges,"  and  he  wrote : 

If  you  promise  me  you  will  come  back  for  next  sum- 
mer, I  won't  get  pinked.  If  I  ever  do,  it  does  n't  matter. 
I  have  had  twenty  years  of  very  happy  life. 

If  he  were  forty-five,  he  would  say,  as  a  French 
officer  at  Coxyde  said  to  me : 

"Four  months,  and  I  have  n't  heard  from  my 
wife  and  children.  We  had  a  pleasant  home.  I 
was  well  to  do.  I  miss  the  good  wines  of  my 
cellar.  This  beer  is  sour.  We  have  done  our 
best,  we  French,  our  utmost,  and  it  is  n't  quite 
enough.  We  have  made  a  supreme  effort,  but  it 
has  n't  cleared  the  enemy  from  our  country.  La 
guerre — c'est  triste" 

He,  too,  fights  on,  but  that  overflow  of  vitality 
does  not  visit  him,  as  it  comes  to  the  youngsters 
of  the  first  line.  It  is  easy  for  the  boys  of  Brit- 
tany to  die,  those  sailors  with  a  rifle,  the  stanch 
Fusiliers  Marins,  who,  outnumbered,  held  fast  at 
Melle  and  Dixmude,  and  for  twelve  months  made 
Nieuport,  the  extreme  end  of  the  western  battle- 

240 


LES  TRAVAILLEURS  DE  LA  GUERRE 

line,  a  great  rock.  It  is  easy,  because  there  is  a 
glory  in  the  eyes  of  boys.  But  the  older  man  lives 
with  second  thoughts,  with  a  subdued  philosophy, 
a  love  of  security.  He  is  married,  with  a  child 
or  two;  his  garden  is  warm  in  the  afternoon  sun. 
He  turns  wistfully  to  the  young,  who  are  so  sure, 
to  cheer  him.  With  him  it  is  bloodshed,  the 
moaning  of  shell-fire,  and  harsh  command. 

One  afternoon  at  Coxyde,  in  the  camp  of  the 
middle-aged — the  territorials — an  open-air  enter- 
tainment was  given.  Massed  up  the  side  of  a 
sand-dune,  row  on  row,  were  the  bearded  men,  two 
thousand  of  them.  There  were  flashes  of  youth, 
of  course — marines  in  dark  blue,  with  jaunty 
round  hat  with  fluffy  red  centerpiece;  Zouaves 
with  dusky  Algerian  skin,  yellow-sorrel  jacket, 
and  baggy  harem  trousers ;  Belgians  in  fresh  khaki 
uniform;  and  Red  Cross  British  Quakers.  But 
the  mass  of  the  men  were  middle-aged — terri- 
torials, with  the  light-blue  long-coat,  good  for  all 
weathers  and  the  sharp  night,  and  the  peaked 
cap.  Over  the  top  of  the  dune  where  the  soldiers 
sat  an  observation  balloon  was  suspended  in  a 
cloudless  blue  sky,  like  a  huge  yellow  caterpillar. 

241 


GOLDEN  LADS 

Beyond  the  pasteboard  stage,  high  on  a  western 
dune,  two  sentries  stood  with  their  bayonets 
touched  by  sunlight.  To  the  south  rose  a  monu- 
ment to  the  territorial  dead.  To  the  north  an 
aeroplane  flashed  along  the  line,  full  speed,  while 
gun  after  gun  threw  shrapnel  at  it. 

As  I  looked  on  the  people,  suddenly  I  thought 
of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  with  the  multitude 
spread  about,  tier  on  tier,  hungry  for  more  than 
bread.  It  was  a  scene  of  summer  beauty,  with 
the  glory  of  the  sky  thrown  in,  and  every  now 
and  then  the  music  of  the  heart.  Half  the  songs 
of  the  afternoon  were  gay,  and  half  were  sad 
with  long  enduring,  and  the  memory  of  the  dear 
ones  distant  and  of  the  many  dead.  Not  in  light- 
ness or  ignorance  were  these  men  making  war. 
When  I  saw  the  multitude  and  how  they  hun- 
gered, I  wished  that  Bernhardt  could  come  to 
them  in  the  dunes  and  express  in  power  what  is 
only  hinted  at  by  humble  voices.  I  thought  how 
everywhere  we  wait  for  some  supreme  one  to 
gather  up  the  hope  of  the  nations  and  the  anguish 
of  the  individual,  and  make  a  music  that  will  send 
us  forward  to  the  Rhine. 

242 


LES  TRAVAILLEURS  DE  LA  GUERRE 

But  a  better  thing  than  that  took  place.  One 
of  their  own  came  and  shaped  their  suffering  into 
song.  And  together,  he  and  they,  they  made  a 
song  that  is  close  to  the  great  experience  of  war. 
A  Belgian,  one  of  the  boy  soldiers,  came  forward 
to  sing  to  the  bearded  men.  And  the  song  that 
he  sang  was  "La  valse  des  obus" — "The  Dance  of 
the  Shells." 

"Dear  friends,  I'm  going  to  sing  you  some 
rhymes  on  the  war  at  the  Yser." 

The  men  to  whom  he  was  singing  had  been 
holding  the  Yser  for  ten  months. 

"I  want  you  to  know  that  life  in  the  trenches, 
night  by  night,  is  n't  gay." 

Two  thousand  men,  unshaved  and  tousled,  with 
pain  in  their  joints  from  those  trench  nights,  were 
listening. 

"As  soon  as  you  get  there,  you  must  set  to  work. 
It  does  n't  matter  whether  it 's  a  black  night  or  a 
full  moon;  without  making  a  sound,  close  to  the 
enemy,  you  must  fill  the  sand-bags  for  the  fortifi- 
cations." 

Every  man  on  the  hill  had  been  doing  just  that 
thing  for  a  year. 

243 


GOLDEN  LADS 

Then  came  his  chorus: 

"Every  time  we  are  in  the  trenches,  Crack! 
There  breaks  the  shell." 

But  his  French  has  a  verve  that  no  literal  trans- 
lation will  give.  Let  us  take  it  as  he  sang  it : 

"Crack!  II  tombe  des  obus,"  sang  the  slight 
young  Belgian,  leaning  out  toward  the  two  thou- 
sand men  of  many  colors,  many  nations ;  and  soon 
the  sky  in  the  north  was  spotted  with  white  clouds 
of  shrapnel-smoke. 

"There  we  are,  all  of  us,  crouching  with  bent 
back — Crack!  Once  more  an  obus.  The  shrap- 
nel, which  try  to  stop  us  at  our  job,  drive  us  out; 
but  the  things  that  bore  us  still  more — Crack! — 
are  just  those  obus." 

With  each  "Crack!  II  tombe  des  obus,"  the 
big  bass-drum  boomed  like  the  shell  he  sang  of. 
His  voice  was  as  tense  and  metallic  as  a  taut 
string,  and  he  snapped  out  the  lilting  line  in  swift 
staccato  as  if  he  were  flaying  his  audience  with 
a  whip.  Man  after  man  on  the  hillside  took  up 
the  irresistible  rhythm  in  an  undertone,  and 
"Cracked"  with  the  singer.  In  front  of  me  was 
being  created  a  folk-song.  The  bitterness  and 

244 


LES  TRAVAILLEURS  DE  LA  GUERRE 

glory  of  their  life  were  being  told  to  them,  and 
they  were  hearing  the  singer  gladly.  Their 
leader  was  lifting  the  dreary  trench  night  and 
death  itself  into  a  surmounting  and  joyous  thing. 

"When  you  've  made  your  entrenchment,  then 
you  must  go  and  guard  it  without  preliminaries. 
All  right;  go  ahead.  But  just  as  you're  mov- 
ing, you  have  to  squat  down  for  a  day  and  a  night 
— yes,  for  a  full  twenty-four  hours — because 
things  are  hot.  Somebody  gives  you  half  a  drop 
of  coffee.  Thirst  torments  you.  The  powder- 
fumes  choke  you." 

Here  and  there  in  the  crowd,  listening  intently, 
men  were  stirring.  The  lad  was  speaking  to  the 
exact  intimate  detail  of  their  experience.  This 
was  the  life  they  knew.  What  would  he  make 
of  it? 

"Despite  our  sufferings,  we  cherish  the  hope 
some  day  of  returning  and  finding  our  parents, 
our  wives,  and  our  little  ones.  Yes,  that  is  my 
hope,  my  joyous  hope.  But  to  come  to  that  day, 
so  like  a  dream,  we  must  be  of  good  cheer.  It 
is  only  by  enduring  patience,  full  of  confidence, 
that  we  shall  force  back  our  oppressors.  To  chase 

245 


GOLDEN  LADS 

away  those  cursed  Prussians — Crack!  We  need 
the  obus.  My  captain  calling,  'Crack!  More, 
still  more  of  those  obus!'  Giving  them  the 
bayonet  in  the  bowels,  we  shall  chase  them  clean 
beyond  the  Rhine.  And  our  victory  will  be  won 
to  the  waltz  of  the  obus." 

It  was  a  song  out  of  the  heart  of  an  uncon- 
querable boy.  It  climbed  the  hillock  to  the  top. 
The  response  was  the  answer  of  men  moved. 
His  song  told  them  why  they  fought  on.  There 
is  a  Belgium,  not  under  an  alien  rule,  which  the 
shells  have  not  shattered,  and  that  dear  kingdom 
is  still  uninvaded.  The  mother  would  rather 
lose  her  husband  and  her  son  than  lose  the  France 
that  made  them.  Their  earthly  presence  is  less 
precious  than  the  spirit  that  passed  into  them  out 
of  France.  That  is  why  these  weary  men  con- 
tinue their  fight.  The  issue  will  rest  in  something 
more  than  a  matter  of  mathematics.  It  is  the  last 
stand  of  the  human  spirit. 

What  is  this  idea  of  country,  so  passionately 
held,  that  the  women  walk  to  the  city  gates  with 
son  and  husband  and  send  them  out  to  die?  It 
is  the  aspect  of  nature  shared  in  by  folk  of  one 

246 


LES  TRAVAILLEURS  DE  LA  GUERRE 

blood,  an  arrangement  of  hill  and  pasture  which 
grew  dear  from  early  years,  sounds  and  echoes 
of  sound  that  come  from  remembered  places.  It 
is  the  look  of  a  land  that  is  your  land,  the  light 
that  flickers  in  an  English  lane,  the  bells  that  used 
to  ring  in  Bruges. 

LA  VALSE  DES  OBUS 


Chers  amis,  je  vais 

Vous  chanter  des  couplets, 

Sur  la  guerre, 

A  1'Yser. 

Pour  vous  faire  savoir, 

Que  la  vie,  tous  les  soirs, 

Aux  tranchees, 

N'est  pas  gaie. 

A  peine  arrive, 

'1  Faut  aller  travailler. 

Qu'il  fasse  noir'  ou  qu'il  y  ait  clair  de  lune, 

Et  sans  fair'  du  bruit, 

Nous  aliens  pres  de  1'ennemi, 

Remplir  des  sacs  pour  fair'  des  abris. 

IT   £T    IJe   REFRAIN 

Chaqu'  fois  que  nous  sommes  aux  tranchees, 

Crack!     II  tombe  des  obus. 

247 


GOLDEN  LADS 

Nous  sommes  tous  la,  le  dos  courbee 

Crack!     Encore  un  obus. 

Les  shrapnels  pour  nous  divetir, 

Au  travail,  nous  font  deguerpir. 

Mais,  et  qui  nous  ennuie  le  plus, 

Crack !  se  sont  les  obus. 

II 

L'abri  termine, 

'1  Faut  aller  1'occuper, 

Sans  fagons. 

Allez-donc. 

Pas  moyen  d'  se  bouger 
Done,  on  doit  y  tester 

Accroupi, 

Jour  et  nuit, 

Pendant  la  chaleur, 

Pour  passer  vingt-quatr'  heures. 

On  nous  donn'  une  d'mi  gourde  de  cafe. 

La  soif  nous  tourmente, 
Et  la  poudre  asphyxiante, 
Nous  etouffe  au  dessus  du  marche. 

in 

Malgre  nos  souffrances, 

Nous  gardons  1'esperance 

D'  voir  le  jour, 

De  notr'  retour 

De  r'trouver  nos  parents, 

248 


LES  TRAVAILLEURS  DE  LA  GUERRE 

Nos  femmes  et  nos  enfants. 

Plein  de  joie, 

Oui  ma  foi, 

Mais  pour  arriver, 

A  ce  jour  tant  reve, 

Nous  devons  tous  y  mettre  du  coeur, 

C'est  avec  patience, 

Et  plein  de  confiance, 

Que  nous  repouss'rons  les  oppresseurs. 

REFRAIN 

Pour  chasser  ces  maudits  All'mands 

Crack !     II  faut  des  obus. 
En  plein  dedans  mon  commandant, 

Crack!     Encore  des  obus. 

Et  la  baionnett'  dans  les  reins, 

Nous  les  chass'rons  au  dela  du  Rhin. 

La  victoire  des  Allies  s'ra  due 

A  la  valse  des  obus. 


249 


There  is  little  value  in  telling  of  suffering  un- 
less something  can  be  done  about  it.  So  I  close 
this  book  with  an  appeal  for  help  in  a  worthy 
work. 


251 


REMAKING  FRANCE 

THERE  was  a  young  peasant  farmer  who 
went  out  with  his  fellows,  and  stopped  the 
most  powerful  and  perfectly  equipped  army  of 
history.  He  saved  France,  and  the  cause  of  gen- 
tleness and  liberty.  He  did  it  by  the  French 
blood  in  him — in  gay  courage  and  endurance^ 
He  was  happy  in  doing  it,  or,  if  not  happy,  yet 
glorious.  But  he  paid  the  price.  The  enemy 
artillery  sent  a  splinter  of  shell  that  mangled  his 
arm.  He  lay  out  through  the  long  night  on  the 
rich  infected  soil.  Then  the  stretcher  bearers 
found  him  and  lifted  him  to  the  car,  and  car- 
ried him  to  the  field  hospital.  There  they  had  to- 
operate  swiftly,  for  infection  was  spreading.  So 
he  was  no  longer  a  whole  man,  but  he  was  still 
of  good  spirit,  for  he  had  done  his  bit  for  France. 
Then  they  bore  him  to  a  base  hospital,  where  he 
had  white  sheets  and  a  wholesome  nurse.  He 
lay  there  weak  and  content.  Every  one  was  good 
to  him.  But  there  came  a  day  when  they  told 

253 


GOLDEN  LADS 

him  he  must  leave  to  make  room  for  the  fresher 
cases  of  need.  So  he  was  turned  loose  into  a 
world  that  had  no  further  use  for  him.  A  crip- 
ple, he  could  n't  fight  and  he  could  n't  work,  for 
his  job  needed  two  arms,  and  he  had  given  one, 
up  yonder  on  the  Marne.  He  drifted  from  shop 
to  shop  in  Paris.  But  he  did  n't  know  a  trade. 
Life  was  through  with  him,  so  one  day,  he  shot 
himself. 

That,  we  learn  from  authoritative  sources,  is 
the  story  of  more  than  one  broken  soldier  of 
Joffre's  army. 

To  be  shot  clean  dead  is  an  easier  fate  than  to 
be  turned  loose  into  life,  a  cripple,  who  must  beg 
his  way  about.  Shall  these  men  who  have  de- 
fended France  be  left  to  rot*?  All  they  ask 
is  to  be  allowed  to  work.  It  is  gallant  and 
stirring  to  fight,  and  when  wounded  the  soldier 
is  tenderly  cared  for.  But  when  he  comes  out, 
broken,  he  faces  the  bitterest  thing  in  war.  After 
the  hospital — what1?  Too  bad,  he  's  hurt — but 
there  is  no  room  in  the  trades  for  any  but  a  trained 
man. 

Why  not  train  him1?  Why  not  teach  him  a 
254 


REMAKING  FRANCE 

trade?  Build  a  bridge  that  will  lead  him  from 
the  hospital  over  into  normal  life.  That  is  bet- 
ter than  throwing  him  out  among  the  derelicts. 
Pauperism  is  an  ill  reward  for  the  service  that 
shattered  him,  and  it  is  poor  business  for  a  world 
that  needs  workers.  If  these  crippled  ones  are  not 
permitted  to  reconstruct  their  working  life,  the 
French  nation  will  be  dragged  down  by  the  multi- 
tude of  maimed  unemployable  men,  who  are  be- 
ing turned  loose  from  the  hospitals — unfit  to 
fight,  untrained  to  work:  a  new  and  ever-increas- 
ing Army  of  The  Miserable.  The  stout  back- 
bone and  stanch  spirit  of  even  France  will  be 
snapped  by  this  dead-weight  of  suffering. 

In  our  field  hospital  at  Furnes,  we  had  one 
ward  where  a  wave  of  gaiety  swept  the  twenty 
beds  each  morning.  It  came  when  the  leg  of  the 
bearded  man  was  dressed  by  the  nurse.  He 
thrust  it  out  from  under  the  covering:  a  raw 
stump,  off  above  the  ankle.  It  was  an  old  wound, 
gone  sallow  with  the  skin  lapped  over.  The 
men  in  the  cots  close  by  shouted  with  laughter 
at  the  look  of  it,  and  the  man  himself  laughed 
till  he  brought  pain  to  the  wound.  Then  he 

255 


GOLDEN  LADS 

would  lay  hold  of  the  sides  of  the  bed  to  control 
his  merriment.  The  dressing  proceeded,  with 
brisk  comment  from  the  wardful  of  men,  and  swift 
answers  from  the  patient  under  treatment.  The 
grim  wound  had  so  obviously  made  an  end  of  the 
activity  of  that  particular  member  and,  as  is  war's 
way,  had  done  it  so  evilly,  with  such  absence  of 
beauty,  that  only  the  human  spirit  could  cover 
that  hurt.  So  he  and  his  comrades  had  made  it 
the  object  of  gaiety. 

For  legless  men,  there  are  a  dozen  trades  open, 
if  they  are  trained.  They  can  be  made  into  tail- 
ors, typists,  mechanicians.  The  soldiers'  schools, 
already  established,  report  success  in  shoemaking, 
for  instance.  The  director  sends  us  this  word : — 

"From  the  first  we  had  foreseen  for  this  the 
greatest  success — the  results  have  surpassed  our 
hopes.  We  are  obliged  to  double  the  size  of  the 
building,  and  increase  the  number  of  professors. 

"Why? 

"Because,  more  than  any  other  profession,  that 
of  shoemaking  is  the  most  feasible  in  the  country, 
in  the  village,  in  the  small  hamlet.  This  is  the 
one  desire  of  most  of  these  wounded  soldiers: 

256 


REMAKING  FRANCE 

before  everything,  they  wish  to  be  able  to  re- 
turn to  their  homes.  And  all  the  more  if  a  wife 
and  children  wait  them  there,  in  a  little  house 
with  a  patch  of  garden.  Out  of  our  fifty  men 
now  learning  shoemaking,  twenty-nine  were  once 
sturdy  farm  laborers.  The  profession  is  not  fa- 
tiguing and,  in  spite  of  our  fears,  not  one  of  our 
leg-amputated  men  has  given  up  his  apprentice- 
ship on  account  of  fatigue  or  physical  inability.'* 

Very  many  of  the  soldiers  are  maimed  in  hand 
or  arm.  On  the  broad  beach  of  La  Panne,  in 
front  of  the  Ocean  Hospital  of  Dr.  Depage,  a 
young  soldier  talked  with  my  wife  one  afternoon. 
Early  in  the  war  his  right  arm  had  been  shot 
through  the  bicep  muscle.  He  had  been  sent  to 
London,  where  a  specialist  with  infinite  care  linked 
the  nerves  together.  Daily  the  wounded  boy 
willed  strength  into  the  broken  member,  till  at  last 
he  found  he  could  move  the  little  finger.  It  was 
his  hope  to  bring  action  back  to  the  entire  hand, 
finger  by  finger. 

"You  can't  do  anything — you  can't  even  write," 
they  said  to  him.  So  he  met  that,  by  schooling 
his  left  hand  to  write. 

257 


GOLDEN  LADS 

"Your  fighting  days  are  over,"  they  said.  He 
went  to  a  shooting  gallery,  and  with  his  left  arm 
learned  how  to  hold  a  rifle  and  aim  it.  Through 
the  four  months  of  his  convalescence  he  practised 
to  be  worthy  of  the  front  line.  The  military  au- 
thorities could  not  put  up  an  objection  that  he  did 
not  meet.  So  he  won  his  way  back  to  the  Yser 
trenches.  And  there  he  had  received  his  second 
hurt  and  this  time  the  enemy  wounded  him  thor- 
oughly. And  now  he  was  sitting  on  the  sands 
wondering  what  the  future  held  for  him. 

Spirit  like  that  does  not  deserve  to  be  broken 
by  despair.  Apparatus  has  been  devised  to  sup- 
ply the  missing  section  of  the  arm,  and  such  a 
trade  as  toy-making  offers  a  livelihood.  It  is  car- 
ried on  with  a  sense  of  fun  even  in  the  absence 
of  all  previous  education.  One-armed  men  are 
largely  employed  in  it.  Let  us  enter  the  training 
shop  at  Lyon,  and  watch  the  work.  The  wood  is 
being  shot  out  from  the  sawing-machine  in  thin 
strips  and  planed  on  both  sides.  This  is  being 
done  by  a  man,  who  used  to  earn  his  living 
as  a  packer,  and  suffered  an  amputation  of  his 
right  leg.  The  boards  are  assembled  in  thick- 

258 


REMAKING  FRANCE 

nesses  of  twenty,  and  cut  out  by  a  "ribbon  saw." 
This  is  the  occupation  of  a  former  tile  layer,  with 
his  left  leg  gone.  Others  employed  in  the  process 
are  one-armed  men. 

Of  carpentry  the  report  from  the  men  is  this : 
"This  work  seems  to  generate  good  humor  and 
liveliness.  For  this  profession  two  arms  are  al- 
most necessary.  It  can  be  practised  by  a  man 
whose  leg  has  been  amputated,  preferably  the 
right  leg,  for  the  resting  point,  in  handling  the 
plane,  is  on  the  left  leg.  However,  we  cannot 
forget  that  one-armed  men  have  achieved  wonder- 
ful results." 

The  profits  of  the  work  are  divided  in  full 
among  the  pupils  as  soon  as  they  have  reached 
the  period  of  production.  Each  section  has  its  in- 
dividual fund  box.  The  older  members  divide 
among  themselves  two  thirds  of  the  gain.  The 
more  recently  trained  take  the  remainder.  The 
new  apprentices  have  nothing,  because  they  make 
no  finished  product  as  yet.  That  was  the  rule  of 
the  shop.  But  certain  sections  petitioned  that  the 
profits  should  be  equally  divided  among  all,  with- 
out distinction.  They  said  that  among  the  new- 

259 


GOLDEN  LADS 

comers  there  were  many  as  needy  as  the  older  ap- 
prentices. 

The  director  says: 

"This  request  came  from  too  noble  a  sentiment 
not  to  be  granted,  especially  as  in  this  way  we 
are  certain  that  our  pupils  will  see  to  the  discipline 
of  the  workshops,  being  the  first  concerned  that  no 
one  shall  shirk." 

He  adds: 

"I  wish  to  cite  an  incident.  One  of  the  pu- 
pils of  the  group  of  shoemakers,  having  been 
obliged  to  remain  over  a  month  in  the  hospital, 
had  his  share  fall  to  nothing.  His  comrades  got 
together  and  raised  among  themselves  a  sum  equal 
to  their  earnings,  so  that  his  enforced  absence 
would  not  cause  him  to  suffer  any  loss.  These 
are  features  one  is  happy  to  note,  because  they 
reveal  qualities  of  heart  in  our  pupils,  much  to  be 
appreciated  in  those  who  have  suffered,  and  be- 
cause they  show  that  our  efforts  have  contributed 
to  keep  around  them  an  atmosphere  where  these 
qualities  can  develop." 

The  war  has  been  ingenious  in  devising  cruel 
hurts,  robbing  the  painter  of  his  hand,  the  mu- 

260 


REMAKING  FRANCE 

sician  of  his  arm,  the  horseman  of  his  leg.  It  has 
taken  the  peasant  from  his  farm,  and  the  mason 
from  his  building.  Their  suffering  has  enriched 
them  with  the  very  quality  that  will  make  them 
useful  citizens,  if  they  can  be  set  to  work,  if  only 
some  one  will  show  them  what  to  do.  For  each 
of  these  men  there  is  an  answer  for  his  wrecked 
life,  and  the  answer  is  found  in  these  workshops 
where  disabled  soldiers  can  learn-  the  new  trade 
fitted  to  their  crippled  condition. 

It  costs  only  four  to  five  francs  a  day  to  sup- 
port the  man  during  his  period  of  education. 
The  length  of  time  of  his  tuition  depends  on  the 
man  and  his  trade — sometimes  three  months, 
sometimes  six  months.  One  hundred  dollars  will 
meet  the  average  of  all  cases.  The  Americans  in 
Paris  raised  $20,000  immediately  on  learning  of 
this  need.  In  our  country  we  are  starting  the 
"American  Committee  for  Training  in  Suitable 
Trades  the  Maimed  Soldiers  of  France."  Mrs. 
Edmund  Lincoln  Baylies  is  chairman  for  the 
United  States.  Her  address  is  Room  B,  Plaza 
Hotel,  New  York. 

We  have  been  owing  France  through  a  hun- 
261 


GOLDEN  LADS 

dred  years  for  that  little  matter  of  first  aid  in  our 
American  Revolution.  Here  is  an  admirable 
chance  to  show  we  are  still  warmed  by  the  love 
and  succor  she  rendered  us  then. 

At  this  moment  30,000  maimed  soldiers  are 
asking  for  work;  30,000  jobs  are  ready  for  them. 
The  employers  of  France  are  holding  the  positions 
open,  because  they  need  these  workers.  Only  the 
training  is  lacking.  This  society  to  train  maimed 
soldiers  is  not  in  competiton  with  any  existing 
form  of  relief  work:  it  supplements  all  the  others 
— ambulances  and  hospitals  and  dressing  stations. 
They  are  temporary,  bridging  the  month  of  calam- 
ity. This  gives  back  to  the  men  the  ten,  twenty, 
thirty  years  of  life  still  remaining.  They  must 
not  remain  the  victims  of  their  own  heroism. 
They  ask  only  to  be  permitted  to  go  on  with  their 
work  for  France.  They  will  serve  in  the  shop 
and  the  factory  as  they  have  served  at  the  Aisne 
and  the  Yser.  This  is  a  charity  to  do  away  with 
the  need  of  charity.  It  is  help  that  leads  directly 
to  self-help. 

THE    END 

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Japonette Robert  W.  Chambers 

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Jeanne  of  the  Marshes E.  Phillips  Oppenheim 

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Jude  the  Obscure Thomas  Hardy 

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Kingsmead Bettina  Von  Hutten 

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Lady  Merton,  Colonist Mrs.  Humphry  Ward 

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Mary  Moreland Marie  Van  Vorst 

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Mediator,  The Roy  Norton 

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Miss  Gibbie  Gault Kate  Langley  Bosher 

Miss  Philura's  Wedding  Gown F.  M.  Kingsley 

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Mr.  Bingle George  Ban  McCutcheon 

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